HARLEM, NY.- Claire Oliver Gallery announces We AmeRícans, a group exhibition curated by acclaimed photographer and curator Ruben Natal-San Miguel, on view November 5, 2025 - January 3, 2026. Opening during National Puerto Rican Heritage Month, the exhibition brings together multiple generations of Puerto Rican and Puerto Rican-descendant artists, Carlos Betancourt, Elsa María Meléndez, Erica Morales, Ruben Natal-San Miguel, Dave Ortiz, Felix Plaza, Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz, Nitza Tufiño, Beatriz Williams, James Cuebas, and Enoc Perez, whose works reflect the history, resilience, and cultural contributions of the Puerto Rican community in New York City and beyond. The exhibition title is inspired by the celebrated 1985 poem AmeRícan by Tato Laviera, a pioneering Nuyorican poet whose work embraced cultural hybridity, identity, and pride. We AmeRícans features artists whose practices span painting, photography, sculpture, printmaking, textiles, and mixed media, creating a multivocal portrait of Puerto Rican identity and its diasporic reach.
Ruben Natal-San Miguel, Home Ruins, La Perla, Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, 2017, color serigraph/photo silkscreen on canvas, 24 x 36 inches | 60.96 x 91.44 cm.
“This exhibition is a celebration and an act of preservation, documenting the creativity, strength, and ongoing impact of Puerto Rican artists across generations,” says curator and artist Ruben Natal-San Miguel. “Through their work, we see not just personal narratives, but the collective story of migration, labor, resilience, and cultural pride.”
Claire Oliver adds, “We are honored to present this important exhibition during National Puerto Rican Heritage Month, continuing our mission to support artists whose work expands our understanding of history, identity, and community.”
Erica Morales, You're Gonna Lose The House, 2024, spray paint, fabric collage and pencil on paper, 30 x 22 inches | 76.2 x 55.88 cm.
Among the participating artists are internationally celebrated figures such as Carlos Betancourt, known for his performative installations staged worldwide, including a major takeover of South Beach during Art Basel Miami Beach 2024. James Cuebas is a member of the Rafael Tufiño Printmaking Workshop in East Harlem, under the direction of artist Nitza Tufiño, and a member of the Lower East Side Printshop. He is presently working and experimenting with the following techniques: gum bichromate, lithography, silkscreen, and monoprinting. Enoc Perez, a contemporary Puerto Rican Artist best known for his paintings and oil stick renditions of Modernist architecture, depicts his subject matter as a “witness” to historically relevant locations and events, while pioneering artist Nitza Tufiño, co-founder of El Museo del Barrio and Taller Boricua Printmaking Studio, grounds the exhibition in a lineage of cultural activism and institution building. Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz, an interdisciplinary Afro-Latinx artist whose practice draws from European portraiture, comics, performance, and folkloric traditions to confront race, trauma, and healing, has exhibited at major institutions including the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, and the Manifesta and Performa biennials.
Beatriz Williams, Madurando, 2024, acrylic on canvas, 40 x 30 inches | 101.6 x 76.2 cm.
The exhibition also highlights artists who have been central to expanding the visual language of Puerto Rican identity. Textile artist Elsa María Meléndez, winner of the Smithsonian’s People’s Choice Award at American Portraiture Today, presents works that weave personal and political narratives. Erica Morales, recipient of the 2022 Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Grant, reflects on her dual role as educator and practicing artist in New York City. Painter Beatriz Williams, the youngest participant, bridges the divide between her Puerto Rican roots and her family in New York, evoking a poignant longing for the Island’s traditions and histories. Felix Plaza, meanwhile, makes his gallery debut, offering audiences the discovery of a fresh and urgent voice in printmaking and painting.
Anchoring the exhibition is the curatorial vision of Ruben Natal-San Miguel, an acclaimed photographer whose own works are housed in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Studio Museum of Harlem, and El Museo del Barrio. His perspective as both artist and cultural historian brings together these intergenerational practices to tell a story of migration, labor, resilience, and cultural pride.
Felix Plaza, Flora - Rojo y verde, 1999-2020, gum bichromate and silkscreen, individually hand cut Rives BFK and other papers, 30 x 22.5 inches | 76.2 x 57.15 cm.
The exhibition draws historical grounding from the Great Migration of Puerto Ricans to New York City, a transformative wave beginning in the mid-20th century when hundreds of thousands migrated from Puerto Rico to the mainland. Factors such as economic hardship, increased job opportunities in New York, and the accessibility of air travel fueled this movement, making New York City the largest Puerto Rican cultural center outside of the island. By the mid-1960s, more than one million Puerto Ricans had settled in the United States, with the majority residing in New York City.
We AmeRícans also pays tribute to Puerto Rican women who were instrumental in the garment industry of New York City, particularly in the Lower East Side’s garment district, where their skill, creativity, and resilience shaped an industry and provided economic stability for their families and communities.
