This is the third segment in a series highlighting Latina artists like Joiri Minaya, the uphill battles we face, and the ways we’re counteracting our own erasure.

If you’re a Latina artist trying to break into the art world, being in New York gives you a sliver of an advantage, but just a sliver. The majority of art publications are based in the Big Apple, which means proximity to power, to institutions, to media. But proximity doesn’t equal access, and access doesn’t equal recognition.

Take Joiri Minaya – a Dominican-United Statesian multidisciplinary artist whose work dismantles the colonial fantasy of the Caribbean. She’s in New York. She’s been in major residencies. She’s won prestigious grants and awards. She has receipts. And yet, despite all of that, she’s still navigating a system where Latina artists remain underrepresented in major exhibitions, under-collected by museums, and underreported by the press.

Her work critically engages with how the Caribbean has been imagined, marketed, and consumed – especially by the West. But here’s the irony: the art world loves a critique of colonialism, as long as it’s not forced to acknowledge its own complicity.

The Caribbean as a Performance for the Western Gaze

Minaya is not interested in feeding audiences the fantasy they expect. She interrogates the ways the Caribbean – and by extension, Caribbean women – have been commodified, sexualized, and reduced to a backdrop for Western pleasure. In her research, she’s collected vintage travel brochures and tourism ads that push an idealized, hyper-exoticized version of the Caribbean, where the women are always scantily clad, always available, always an extension of the tropical landscape.

Minaya responds to these reductive images by reclaiming and distorting them. Her project “Containers” is a direct challenge to the ways Caribbean women are expected to perform. She photographs women wrapped in floral fabrics that mimic the gaudy, mass-produced aesthetics of tropical tourism decor, simultaneously referencing the imagery and obstructing it. The women are both present and hidden, an embodiment of the paradox Minaya is exposing: the expectation that Caribbean women exist to be seen, but only in ways that serve the colonial gaze.

Minaya also plays with the idea of dominance over nature, another recurring theme in colonial narratives. She questions the concept of “paradise” itself – who defines it, who controls it, and who is excluded from it. Her interventions force us to recognize how the Western imagination still shapes the way the Caribbean is represented and understood, not just in art, but in politics, media, and everyday interactions.

The Double Bind of Latina Artists in New York

New York might be the so-called center of the art world, but it’s also a place where Latina artists have to fight twice as hard for half the recognition. For Minaya and artists like Yali Romagoza, being in NYC means they at least have a shot at media visibility. But they’re still battling the same systemic barriers.

Latina artists don’t get the benefit of being labeled “visionary” or “groundbreaking” just because they use unconventional materials or challenge dominant narratives. Instead, their work is often reduced to identity politics, pigeonholed as niche, or treated as part of a temporary diversity push. Meanwhile, white artists who dabble in Caribbean imagery – no matter how superficial their engagement – get celebrated for their “interest in global themes” and quickly find themselves in major collections.

It’s not that Minaya’s work isn’t being seen. It’s that the industry still doesn’t know how to value it properly.

The Press’s Role in Keeping Latina Artists on the Margins

Joiri Minaya has been exhibited, she’s been acquired, she’s been supported by fellowships – but when was the last time you saw her name in a mainstream art publication? How many Latina artists with her level of success are getting the consistent, high-profile coverage that turns artists into household names?

The media plays a huge role in who gets remembered and who gets erased. The art world relies on critics, curators, and institutions to signal who matters, who is “the next big thing.” And if Latina artists aren’t being written about with the same urgency and consistency as their white counterparts, then the cycle of exclusion continues.

Minaya’s work should be essential in conversations about contemporary art, not just when a museum needs a Latin American artist for an exhibition checklist, but all the time. Because her work isn’t just about the Caribbean. It’s about power, control, and the ways history continues to shape how we see the world today.

The Industry Needs to Catch Up

Latina artists like Minaya aren’t waiting for permission to be seen, because if they did, they’d be waiting forever. They are creating, exhibiting, and building their own spaces in an industry that still refuses to acknowledge them on equal footing. They are carving out their own platforms, supporting each other, and developing alternative networks to sustain their practices, not because they want to exist outside the mainstream, but because the mainstream refuses to make space for them.

So the real question is: When will the art world start catching up? When will curators, critics, collectors, and institutions stop treating Latina artists as an afterthought, a quota to fill, or a temporary trend? When will we stop seeing major exhibitions of Latin American and Caribbean artists that lump together entire regions into a single survey, as if their work and histories are interchangeable?

The fact that Joiri Minaya has had to navigate this landscape despite her accolades, her residency experience, and her presence in New York – the so-called center of the art world – proves that visibility is not the same as value. The industry sees her. It sees Latina artists. It just doesn’t elevate them in the way it does their white counterparts.

So, what will it take? Another decade of performative inclusivity? Another round of grants that provide temporary support but no lasting structural change? Another diversity-themed group show that brings artists in for the moment but does nothing to ensure they have a seat at the table in the long run?

Latina artists have been doing the work. It’s the art world that needs to catch up. And if it doesn’t, it won’t be because of a lack of talent, vision, or urgency from the artists. It will be because the institutions that claim to shape art history refused to recognize history in the making.

Image: Photos of installation at Wave Hill Sunroom Project Space, Bronx, NY (July 12 – Sept 5, 2016). Photo credit: Stefan Hagen.