BIO

b. 1975, Brooklyn, New York

Brooklyn born, Puerto Rican artist Yasmin Hernandez’ work is rooted in struggles for personal, spiritual and political liberation. Her project Bieké: Tierra de valientes explores the people’s fight against US Navy military maneuvers and contamination on Vieques, the island municipality of Puerto Rico. With the support of grants from the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture, and the Puffin Foundation, the project debuted with an exhibit at Vieques’ Museo Fuerte Conde de Mirasol in 2009. Having been extended several times, the exhibit was on view a total of six months. In 2011 the series started to tour the main island of Puerto Rico with an exhibition at la Universidad Interamericana de Puerto Rico in Fajardo. The artist is currently developing a series of short “art docs” featuring many of the oral histories she collected while researching for the project. Working mostly with social justice themes, Yasmin has received many recognitions including an Artist/ Activist of the Year award in 2006 from the NYC-based organization, Art for Change, the Ramón Feliciano Social Justice Prize from the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College CUNY and a Mujeres Destacadas/ Outstanding Latinas Award by New York-based Spanish-language newspaper, El Diario/ La Prensa.

In recent projects Yasmin combines painting with digital art and video and takes on more personal themes. Working with the premise that the personal is political, she borrows from her own life experiences to make connections to the greater human struggle for survival and liberation. Luz (Light) is a project dedicated to her brother who passed from cancer in 2010. Channeling her family’s espiritismo tradition, Luz explores the spirit’s transcendence in cycles of life and death. Another project in development, Linea Negra, investigates birthing as a sacred state and seeks to reclaim the experience from a male-driven, over-medicalized industry. The project is inspired by the midwife-assisted, natural home birth of her son in 2009. In March of 2010 Yasmin was invited to do a residency on this theme at the Women’s Center at Wright State University in Dayton Ohio.

Yasmin attended the LaGuardia High School of the Arts in Manhattan and earned a BFA in Painting from Cornell University. Her painting series, Realidades de Quisqueya, created with a grant from the Cornell Council for the Arts, has been on permanent exhibit at the Cornell Latino Studies Program Offices since 1997. In 2008 she completed a mural celebrating revolutionary leaders of women and queer communities for the Edmonia Lewis Center for Women and Transgender people at Oberlin College in Ohio and a five-panel painting series documenting 40 years of student activism for the Intercultural Resource Center at Columbia University. Yasmin has developed community education initiatives on themes of art and liberation and as an educator she has worked with the Studio Museum in Harlem, El Museo del Barrio in New York City and Taller Puertorriqueño, Inc. in Philadelphia, among other arts and cultural institutions. Yasmin continues to exhibit and present her work on campuses and at arts and community organizations in the United States and in Puerto Rico. Her works can be seen alongside personal testimonials and historical narratives on her website www.yasminhernandez.com.

© Copyright 2002-11, Yasmin Hernandez. Under no circumstances should any of the images or content of this site be downloaded, printed or reproduced without direct permission from the artist.