My name is Andrea Sofía R. Matos and I am a curator and photographer, born and raised in Puerto Rico. Currently, I am a graduate student at NYU Steinhardt’s Visual Art Administration program in New York City. I graduated summa cum laude from Florida International University with a Bachelor of Art History with a minor in Photography, as well as an Associate in Fine Art and Photography from Miami Dade College. My curatorial practice focuses on the art and culture of the Caribbean, Latin America, Latinx and their diaspora. I have worked in various art and cultural institutions like Museo Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico, MECA Art Fair, Prizm Art Fair, LnS Gallery, the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, The Margulies Collection and Women Photographer’s International Archive (WOPHA), Locust Projects and the Bronx Museum of Arts. My experience in New York, Miami and Puerto Rico has helped me develop my visual literacy and exposed me to the contemporary art scene. My artistic practice often concentrates on issues of identity, family, self-portraiture, and the duality between being born in Puerto Rico and moving to the USA. My recent photographic series aims to educate the spectator on PCOS, Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, a documentary-like project that records my journey since founding out about my diagnosis. In another series titled We Regret to Inform You I documented the unemployment status of my family during the COVID-19 pandemic through rejection letters. Other projects are Lucia Means Light, Forever 21s, and Casa / Home. Since the fall of 2018, I have been a freelance photographer and I've photographed several live performances, concerts, music videos, real estate/commercial, headshots/portraiture. Moreover, I have also documented exhibition openings and artists' artworks for publications and magazine articles. As an emancipated, low-income student that receives zero support, other than emotional, from her parents I appreciate all the help I can obtain to forward my career development and my academic achievement. Ultimately, one of my biggest long-term goals is to create an arts organization that champions artists from all the Caribbean countries and territories and their diasporas, so they may participate in a global market and get financial independence via the visual arts. Support from this scholarship, I would be able to finish my master’s degree and many other resources that will build a steady foundation for the future I am trying to build and would almost ensure I can give back and support my community in more ways than one.

Being born and raised in Puerto Rico allowed me to attend a visual arts high school in the most artistically vibrant city on the island, where my involvement in the arts began. During these formative years, I participated and engaged in the local art scene in various projects by assisting with their production, community outreach, and educational programs. Experiencing the academic and professional art world in Puerto Rico helped me realize I wanted to become an arts administrator and curator concentrating on Caribbean Art. The more I experience the art world, the more apparent the need for leadership and direction is. I have realized that the best way to provide more significant opportunities to the artistic communities in need is to create them. As I attempt to become a leader in the arts, I am determined to provide opportunities for underrepresented groups in the often change-resistant art world. Finally, no matter where I find myself working, I will challenge traditional ways of thinking by initiating decolonizing practices that denounce racism and misogyny and reconstructing them to welcome and celebrate true inclusion and diversity. The 2017 Hurricane Maria that crossed Puerto Rico was brutal and left my mother and me without a home, therefore we decided to move to the United States to Miami, Florida where my aunt lives. My education at Miami Dade College (3.53 GPA) and Florida International University (3.97 GPA) was essential for me to realize the career I wanted, so I did everything I could to gain experiences in different areas of the art world during my associate's and bachelor's degrees. I worked full time and went to school full time while I volunteered and did unpaid and paid internships across distinct art galleries, museums, and institutions that opened up another world of possibilities of what I could achieve in the arts. Since I knew paying for college was going to be a determining factor in my success, I did everything in my power to save my mother from expenses because she couldn't save as much as a penny to help me. I was lucky enough to receive substantial scholarships across my degrees that helped lift myself of financial burden unfortunately, after receiving all the scholarships, grants, and fellowships possible, I still ended up in debt of about $25,000. Now, I am pursuing my graduate degree at New York University which is 50% covered by scholarships, grants, and work-study programs, however, the other 50% is totally up to me and the money will continue to add up by the time I am done with my two-year degree on May 2024. I was reluctant to accept this offer at first because even though NYU was my dream school, I wasn't sure I wanted to further indebt myself. It was a long process to get to where I am today, but I was happy that I took the risk and decided to charge into the unknown fully confident that all this money will be worth it in the end. With the money I will save by paying down my student loans, I will clear my undergraduate loans and I will get one step closer to being debt-free. I will still need to work hard to clear my graduate degree loans but it eases my mind that I will not have to stack up that amount with what I owe from my undergraduate degrees, essentially it's a clean slate, something I desperately need before continuing my master's degree.

Being born and raised in Puerto Rico allowed me to attend a visual arts high school in the most artistically vibrant city of the island, where my involvement in the arts began. During these formative years, I participated and engaged in the local art scene in various projects by assisting with their production, community outreach, and educational programs. Despite these positive experiences, I saw first-hand how difficult it was for art organizations to prosper, not to mention the many occasions when nonprofits, museums, and festivals disappeared because of the lack of structural, economic, and artistically engaging proposals. Consequently, I observed how many artists often felt discouraged by the lack of support for their art and how tight niches in the island's contemporary art circles narrowed upcoming artists' possibility to exhibit their work. Experiencing the academic and professional art world in Puerto Rico helped me realize I wanted to become an arts administrator and curator concentrating in Caribbean Art. Shortly after Hurricane Maria crossed the island, I moved to the United States and settled in Miami, Florida. Relocating to the USA meant learning about various cultures and the lack of attention to them; this made me question if Caribbean art should be my only concentration. Amongst the many groups of minorities fighting for a position in the art world, I identified strongly with the new awareness surfacing of Latinx artists and artists of the Caribbean diaspora. My education at Miami Dade College and Florida International University has been essential to realize the absence of Caribbean art in the curriculums and scholarly material. There were various instances during my undergraduate career where professors were unwilling to have a conversation regarding the limitations of the curriculums and did not appreciate being challenged by the lack of inclusivity and diversity in their selection of artists, artworks, and time periods. In those instances, I would try to approach the professors personally about the subjects that interested me and how they are important to incorporate into the classroom. Many times, the professor’s ego limited their ability to devise a plan moving forward so I took it upon myself to be the change I wanted to see in academia. A specific experience was during my Arts & Politics course where our professor had us write a ten-to-fifteen-page research paper on a topic we were passionate or intrigued about. This was a moment of revelation for me, where I took it upon myself to research Caribbean photography by female artists even though the curriculum rarely mentioned women or photography and the Caribbean remained mostly invisible. Using assigned work in the classroom was one of the ways I was able to challenge and even change the discriminatory one-sided narrative. After that research paper, my professor approached me to send him more information about the photography of the Caribbean and of the women photographers I research so he could add them to the curriculum. Once that hostile experience became a positive one given me the unwillingness to give up, I began doing this in all my courses. And this is something I will continue to do moving forward with my education. During my time working at LnS Gallery, a local art gallery, I found that the shortage of Caribbean art and under-valued mediums were also present in the art market and private collections. I observed how collectors and dealers were reluctant to buy and sell artworks from the Caribbean because they were unsure of their value and legitimacy as fine art. In many instances, it was up to me to educate these collectors on the works and artists and tear away any preconceived notions they had about Caribbean art. In contrast, upon researching women in Cuban society and their artistic role in photography before and after the revolution, I came across Aldeide Delgado, a Cuban-born and Miami-based art historian. Delgado's love of photography and mission to advocate for women, queer and Latinx artists through the Women's Photography International Archive has helped me reinforce my objectives of championing under-represented groups and promoting the decolonization of the lens. As determined as I am to increase the visibility of minority art and artists, at the Margulies Collection, I learned that to be past labels and create genuinely inclusive spaces, one has to focus on the art. Taking a step outside the politics and popular trends that often pollute the art world, I recognized that the best thing I could do to push Caribbean art forward was to free myself from all the surrounding jargon and let the art speak for itself. Above all, they taught me that the most critical aspect of leading an art organization, whether public or private, is educating and presenting the spectators with complex and daring artworks and making art accessible to the communities that would otherwise be deprived of them. Yet, the more I experience the art world, the more apparent the need for leadership and direction is. We need administrators who champion Latinx and Caribbean artists and see the value in mediums such as photography and textiles. I have realized that the best way to provide more significant opportunities to the artistic communities in need is to create them. As I attempt to become a leader in the arts, I am determined to provide opportunities for underrepresented groups in the often change-resistant art world. I will be insistent on hiring people of color, to have representation in each room of the organization, company, or institution I end up working. I will promote and spearhead projects that are, at their core, about the experiences and artistic expression of minorities. Aligning and collaborating with organizations, groups, and individuals who are just as concentrated in breaking barriers down is essential to changing the inequity within the world of art. Finally, no matter where I find myself working, I will challenge traditional ways of thinking by initiating decolonizing practices that denounce racism and misogyny and reconstructing them to welcome and celebrate true inclusion and diversity.

OVERCOMING MARIA My first year of university was ruined as Hurricane Maria struck the island of Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017. This hurricane passed and left my home completely unstable. Nobody knew how many years and how much money it was going to take for a full social, political, and economic recovery to happen. Just like many, the damages that my home suffered became bigger than my family and I could handle. We were left with no other option except move to Miami, Florida in hopes of a new life. We launched ourselves to this new adventure utterly unprepared and blind to all the emotional torment that came from a natural disaster and the loss of one’s home. In the blink of an eye, my world turned upside down as we began to face multiple mental, economic, cultural challenges. From the time that we settled in Miami, I was living in a house with 7 other family members, working 2 part-time jobs, and going to school full-time. Life started going at 100 miles an hour and I began to notice I still had not emotionally and mentally recovered from Hurricane Maria and moving to a different country. I never thought the cultural shock would tear at me so and make it unbelievably hard for me to accommodate and feel at home. Moreover, I have always been a person to plan, to have portions of my life figured out… be structured. Upon moving I saw my life as disorganized and that took a huge toll on me. It seems odd and even uncommon amongst my peers, but I have been this way for as long as I can remember. I wanted to believe that I was still the same person I was back in Puerto Rico. I was in denial of having suffered a post-natural disaster trauma and I could not let go of the fixed mindset I had created to function. In a slow process of healing myself from all I had gone through ever since the hurricane, my mind became less full of sadness and despair. Beginning to realize I had pushed several people out of my life and denied others entry, I began to ask for help. Strangely enough, as soon as I stopped lying to myself, help did come and in the most remarkable way. My first reading assignment upon arriving in Miami and attending FIU was a book by the name of The Promise of a Pencil. At first, I was excited, I have loved reading ever since I was little, and I hadn’t been able to sit with a book for what seemed like a lifetime. Forgetting that, aside from being an educational opportunity, reading is a way of meditating. It lowers your defense mechanisms and takes your mind elsewhere. As I started reading, the less it became about an assignment and the more it became about making me aware of an astonishing amount of things about myself. I identified with this guy whose struggles, and experiences led him to a better version of himself, one that eventually found his passion that helped make a difference in this world. One of the quotes that spoke to me was the following: “Many of us spend our entire lives in the same bubble. We surround ourselves with people who share our opinions, speak the way we speak, and look the way we look. We fear to leave those familiar surroundings, which is natural, but through an exploration of the unfamiliar, we stop focusing on the labels that define what we are and discover who we are” (Adam Braun, The Promise of a Pencil). It was as if everything surrounding me was telling me that this was an inevitable change. That I was getting probably too comfortable with my life back home and that this shift was the first on a chain reaction towards letting go of fear and complacency. I then realized that I was spending all my energy complaining about my hard situation instead of working on ways to make it better. When I finished the book, weight was released from my shoulders. The memoir's encouraging words made me feel that I was not alone and that the answer was within me all along.

Throughout my undergraduate education, and until my last semester, I was sure that I would do my master’s in art history and become a curator shortly after that. As the deadlines to apply got closer, it became clear that something was missing. As much as I love historical research, there were aspects to curatorial work that I longed to be a part of. By mastering the academic and curatorial side of art, I realized that I could provide more significant opportunities to the artistic communities in need. Being born and raised in Puerto Rico allowed me to attend a visual arts high school in the most artistically vibrant city of the island, where my involvement in the arts began. During these formative years, I participated and engaged in the local art scene in various projects by assisting on their production, diffusion, community outreach, and educational programs. Shortly after Hurricane Maria crossed the island, I moved to the United States and settled in Miami, Florida. My education at Miami Dade College and Florida International University has been essential to realize the absence of Caribbean art in the curriculums and scholarly material altogether. During my time working at LnS Gallery, a local art gallery, I found that the shortage of Caribbean art was also present in the art market and public institutions. For instance, I observed how collectors and dealers were reluctant to buy and sell artworks from the Caribbean because they were unsure of their value and legitimacy as fine art. In contrast, upon researching women in Cuban society and their artistic role in photography before and after the revolution, I came across Aldeide Delgado, a Cuban-born and Miami-based art historian who founded the Women’s Photography International Archive. Delgado’s love of photography and mission to advocate for women, queer and Latinx artists has helped me reinforce my objectives of championing under-represented groups and promoting the decolonization of the lens. Simultaneously, I developed an intimate relationship with photography and other under-valued artistic practices such as printmaking, digital art, textiles, collage, and paper-based works. As determined as I am to increase the visibility of minority art and artists, at the Margulies Collection, I learned that to be past labels and create genuinely inclusive spaces; one has to focus on the art. Taking a step outside the politics and popular trends that often pollute the art world, I recognized that the best thing I could do to push Caribbean art forward was to free myself from all the surrounding jargon and let the art speak for itself. It is refreshing to work in a space that is not interested in being the most popular attraction or Instagram likes. The most important aspect of collecting art is to educate, presenting the spectators with complex and daring artworks that would otherwise not reach this community. As I attempt to become a leader in the arts, I am determined to provide opportunities for underrepresented groups and ethnicities in the often change-resistant art world. For instance, one of my long-term goals is to help emerging and mid-career artists by giving them a space to create freely and share their expertise with the community. Additionally, no matter where I find myself working, I will challenge traditional ways of thinking by initiating decolonizing practices that denounce racism and misogyny and reconstructing them to welcome and celebrate true inclusion and diversity. By combining both practices, I will have the proper knowledge to help art organizations and artists carry on their missions in under-resourced communities in the United States, Puerto Rico, the Caribbean, and Latin America.

It is tough to say who has been the most significant influence in my life; I have been blessed with many wonderful mentors who have paved the way in my 22 years. However, I can say that the most considerable influence in my life is and forever will be art, ever since my first involvement in the visual arts through my visual arts high school. My mother's choice to enroll me in this school has completely changed my life, and for that, I will be thankful for the rest of my days. Through art, I feel I have a space to be who I am, to relate to others, and to build and crumble worlds as I choose. It's art that makes me see life as wondrous as it is and as painful as humans make it to be. As a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic and our current government's maladministration, we can see unemployment as a pandemic in itself. In the United States alone, millions of people have been laid off and fired in disproportionate amounts. Equivalently companies are not hiring—leaving millions of people jobless through one of the most dangerous diseases this country has seen in decades. "We Regret to Inform You" is photography project that begun out of the shared struggle of unemployment that my family and I experienced this year. This project tries to shine a light on the gravity of our country's current situation; by utilizing a selection of the many rejection letters, my family and I have received in the past nine months. This project gave birth to another one I created alongside my cousin, Yanius Alvarado “The Unemployment Project: A Digital Experience," a project that begins and ends through conversation. Our research exposed us to thousands of articles, journals, graphs, and videos relating to the past and present unemployment problems. And in that search, we were able to understand the disparities in the numbers that the government is presenting to the public (the official rate) and the data (the true unemployment rate) found by the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity. A complaint with a compilation of rejected letters, they come in all fonts and sizes. Created for shock value that emphasizes the constant rejection people are exposed to thru the internet. Our instagram titled "The Unemployment Project" that features a tsunami of letters that have the common phrases such as Dear Applicant, We regret to inform you, We appreciate your time, Thank you for your interest, You have not been selected. This is our way of activism. This project seeks to highlight the reality of many, which seems incomplete without the spectators' participation. We want to make a statement by identifying and presenting the plethora of rejection letters compiled that add validity to the researched true unemployment rate omitted by the current government. Highlighting the unemployment through the wall of rejection letter leaves room for interpretation. Nonetheless, the graphic and concept art piece alongside the video delineate a straight path from rejection to unemployment to better understand the necessity of true unemployed people. To be unemployed or have the conversation of unemployment is mostly taboo. The digital experience doesn’t want to normalize unemployment; instead, it wants to expose the inaccuracies and consequences (both governmental and personal) our society experiences daily.

As a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic and our current government's maladministration, we can see unemployment as a pandemic in itself. In the United States alone, millions of people have been laid off and fired in disproportionate amounts. Equivalently companies are not hiring—leaving millions of people jobless through one of the most dangerous diseases this country has seen in decades. "We Regret to Inform You" is photography project that begun out of the shared struggle of unemployment that my family and I experienced this year. This project tries to shine a light on the gravity of our country's current situation; by utilizing a selection of the many rejection letters, my family and I have received in the past nine months. This project gave birth to another one I created alongside my cousin, Yanius Alvarado “The Unemployment Project: A Digital Experience," a project that begins and ends through conversation. Our research exposed us to thousands of articles, journals, graphs, and videos relating to the past and present unemployment problems. And in that search, we were able to understand the disparities in the numbers that the government is presenting to the public (the official rate) and the data (the true unemployment rate) found by the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity. A complaint with a compilation of rejected letters, they come in all fonts and sizes. Created for shock value that emphasizes the constant rejection people are exposed to thru the internet. Our instagram titled "The Unemployment Project" that features a tsunami of letters that have the common phrases such as Dear Applicant, We regret to inform you, We appreciate your time, Thank you for your interest, You have not been selected. This is our way of activism. This project seeks to highlight the reality of many, which seems incomplete without the spectators' participation. We want to make a statement by identifying and presenting the plethora of rejection letters compiled that add validity to the researched true unemployment rate omitted by the current government. Highlighting the unemployment through the wall of rejection letter leaves room for interpretation. Nonetheless, the graphic and concept art piece alongside the video delineate a straight path from rejection to unemployment to better understand the necessity of true unemployed people. To be unemployed or have the conversation of unemployment is mostly taboo. The digital experience doesn’t want to normalize unemployment; instead, it wants to expose the inaccuracies and consequences (both governmental and personal) our society experiences daily.

As a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic and our current government's maladministration, we can see unemployment as a pandemic in itself. In the United States alone, millions of people have been laid off and fired in disproportionate amounts. "We Regret to Inform You" is a project that begun out of the shared struggle of unemployment that my family and I experienced. This project tries to shine a light on the gravity of our country's current situation; by utilizing a selection of the many rejection letters, my family and I have received in the past nine months. Being born and raised in Puerto Rico allowed me to attend a visual arts high school in the most artistically vibrant city of the island, where my involvement in the arts began. Shortly after Hurricane Maria crossed the island, I moved to the United States and settled in Miami, Florida. My education at Miami Dade College and Florida International University has been essential to realize the absence of Caribbean art in the curriculums and scholarly material altogether. As I attempt to become a leader in the arts, I am determined to provide opportunities for underrepresented groups and ethnicities in the often change-resistant art world. For instance, one of my long-term goals is to help emerging and mid-career artists by giving them a space to create freely and share their expertise with the community. Additionally, no matter where I find myself working, I will challenge traditional ways of thinking by initiating decolonizing practices that denounce racism and misogyny and reconstructing them to welcome and celebrate true inclusion and diversity. By combining both practices, I will have the proper knowledge to help art organizations and artists carry on their missions in under-resourced communities in the United States, Puerto Rico, the Caribbean, and Latin America.

I have found that the most significant knowledge happens when we are not looking for it. A recent example of this is our current global healthcare crisis, which has changed our lives forever. The chaos that has unfolded in our society has taught me a great deal of the power of images. As an art history student, I find myself analyzing visual content all the time; and consider them an intrinsic part of our lives. How we see objects, places, people, and even how we react to them, has much to do with the images that have surrounded us. Because of the era we live in, where the average person looks at thousands of images a day, the power of images might seem questionable. Yet, because of our mandatory separation from one and other people are using visual imagery to stay sane. Our newfound reality has made us look at the thousands of photographs on our phones that we once took for granted and treasure them. For it is in these pictures that we find loved ones who have passed and experiences we cannot ever repeat. My friends and family have found themselves scrolling through Snapchat memories, Instagram profiles, and old photo albums, reminiscing on the memories shared with people we love. A photograph had never held so much power over our lives, and we certainly had never been so perceptive to their capacity to connect us all. Perhaps this is a step forward for visual literacy and the evident relationship between humans and images.

Upon graduating from Miami Dade College with an AA in Art, specialized in photography, I decided to continue my undergraduate education and transfer to the art history program at Florida International University. Furthermore, I have been accepted into the honors college, starting in Fall 2020. I plan to graduate with my bachelor’s degree and pursue a master’s degree program with a unique concentration on the history of photography, with a view on Latin America. I aspire to continue my education until I have gained my doctorate in the history of art. Given my strong roots from both my parents to the Caribbean and Latin America, I want to help promote the academic research in this area and gain insight on the often-overlooked contributions the artists coming from these countries have been paramount to the development of art throughout history. I am interested explicitly within my field, to focus on the history of photography. We live in an era that produces thousands of photographs a day. Yet, we know little of the origins of the medium and understand little of how meaningful they are in our lives. Because of all the images that we are attacked with every day, whether it’s on social media, advertising campaigns, newspapers, or others, we seem to believe we understand images in their totality. However, I have reason to believe we are not visually literate at all, for we only seem to notice the surface level of a multilayered process full of artistry and meaning. I intend to have a full understanding of the visual language that made possible the great movements and periods across history and examine it alongside the ability of art to be one of the primary conductors of change in any society. I aspire to influence the masses by making them aware of the marginalized and forgotten sectors within the world of art and make these efforts accessible worldwide. I want to create an artistically conscious society that provides various platforms for contemporary visual artists of these shunned groups so they may find the tools to succeed. It has always been clear to me that I want to initiate a conversation on the fundamental role of art in educational systems worldwide. For education is perhaps the most crucial factor that gives future generations the freedom of mind and critical thinking that empowers them. I find myself, in the present and future, working tirelessly to ensure a future in which the cultural and artistic conversations include all the neglected sectors within the artistic community.