Joiri Minaya
 
Lower Level Gallery
July 25, 2026 — May 02, 2027
Joiri Minaya (b.1990, New York City; raised in the Dominican Republic) is a multidisciplinary artist who examines the Tropics as a constructed place and identity. As both performer and saboteur, Minaya challenges misrepresentations that reduce tropical geographies and their inhabitants to imagined fantasies of the colonial imagination. In her work, she reclaims Afro-Indigenous narratives of resistance, ancestral knowledges, and regenerative practices—especially those rooted in plant and botanical traditions.
The exhibition at the Henry will showcase the versatile language of textiles that Minaya has developed to critique the making of a global Tropics—a fabricated realm for the “exotic” extending from the Caribbean to the Pacific. From her storied Aloha shirts to the floral spandex cloths she designed to cloak colonial monuments, the works on view will weave new myths and cannibalize worn stereotypes, using Seattle as a touchpoint to imagine shared histories that connect across the global South.
Engaging the scale and openness of the double-height gallery at the Henry, the exhibition plays with concealment and revelation, inviting visitors to think expansively about the Tropical, and consider art’s role in challenging the grand narratives that shape our understandings of place and culture.

Artist Bio

Joiri Minaya is a New York-based interdisciplinary artist who works in photography, digital media, film, performance, sculpture, textiles, and painting. Born in New York and raised in the Dominican Republic, Minaya describes her multiculturally-informed work as “a reassertion of Self, an exercise of unlearning, decolonizing, and exorcizing imposed histories.” Minaya has recently been part of exhibitions and screenings at the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, The 8th Floor, and the Syracuse University Art Museum, as well as international exhibitions including the Prospect 6 New Orleans Triennial, the Cooper Hewitt Triennial and the Sharjah Biennial 15. She is a recent recipient of the Latinx Artist Fellowship, NYSCA / NYFA Artist Fellowship, Jerome Hill Fellowship, and Artadia award, and has been an artist in residence at the International Studio & Curatorial Program, Light Work, Socrates Sculpture Park, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She is currently one of the inaugural artists in residence at the Monti Artist Studio Program in Crown Heights.
CREDITS

Joiri Minaya is curated by Jennifer Baez, Assistant Professor of Art History, University of Washington, in collaboration with Nina Bozicnik, Senior Curator, Henry Art Gallery and with support from Em Chan, Curatorial Assistant, Henry Art Gallery.

Exhibitions at the Henry are made possible through the generous support of our annual sponsors, 4Culture and ArtsFund.