In this text, artist Bibiana Suarez’s makes a personal statement about her experience as a self-imposed Puerto Rican exile in Chicago, her negotiations of living “on the edge of two cultures,” and her artistic exploration of feelings of loss, dislocation, and uprootedness. She discusses three of her artworks included in the 1992 exhibition Los Encuentros, Los Encontros, Encountersat the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and considers how these works address Puerto Rico’s cultural hybridity and national identity. 

This is an artist’s statement for Los Encuentros, Los Encontros, Encounters, an exhibition held at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Betty Rymer Gallery from August 21 to October 14, 1992, which coincided with the celebration of the quincentennial of Columbus’s arrival in the Americas. Organized by Bob Loescher (professor of art at the School of the Art Institute), the exhibition explored the theme of cultural and ethnic encounter and included works by thirteen Latin American/Latino artists who had been enrolled in the MFA Program at the School of the Art Institute during the 1970s and 1980s, including Mariella Agois (Peru), Raul Cristancho (Colombia), Rafael França (Brazil) Mirentxu Ganzaraín (Chile), Nereyda García-Ferraz (Cuba), Laura González (Mexico), Íñigo Manglano-Ovalle (Spain), Maria Martinez-Cañas (Cuba), Rodolfo Molina (El Salvador), Carlos Pasqueti (Brazil), Arnaldo Roche-Rabell (Puerto Rico), Bibiana Suárez (Puerto Rico), and Ana Maria Tavares (Brazil).The Puerto Rican-born artist Bibiana Suarez has lived in Chicago since 1980, where she received her BFA and MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has exhibited widely in the United States and Puerto Rico and has written about bicultural identity, the politics of the colonial relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico, and contemporary art.