This essay, written by curator Deborah Cullen, offers an account of how El Museo del Barrio was founded out of the drive to establish a creative nexus for Puerto Rican artists who exist between the mainland United States and the Caribbean island. Cullen, however, recognizes that in many instances Puerto Rican artists born either on the Island or in the continental USA have been simplistically defined by either their “here-ness” (New York), or their “there-ness” (San Juan). Concerned for a moment with a group of six artists from the Island, in this exhibition, Cullen proposes to contextualize the works of Nayda Collazo-Llorens, Charles Juhász-Alvarado, Freddie Mercado, Ana Rosa Rivera Marrero, Carlos Rivera Villafañe, and Aaron Salabarrías Valle, instead of reading their work as a result of their identity politics or geographic location. In order to achieve it in this essay, Cullen sets out to place them within the framework of key critical discourse and manifestations taking shape in the decade of the 1990s. Nevertheless, Cullen admits to working from a dearth of information regarding contemporary Puerto Rican art, a lack that is due to the liminal role that the Island paradoxically plays—as not being completely part of the United States, nor fully considered part of Latin America and the Caribbean.