Art connects islands across thousands of miles in “Imagining an Archipelago: Art from Cuba, Guam, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Their Diasporas.” The visually stunning exhibition brings together more than 40 contemporary artists whose work explores the layered realities of island life shaped by U.S. expansion and colonial histories. Through a striking range of scale – from powerful sculptures, paintings and photographs to immersive video and multimedia installations – the exhibition creates a vivid archipelago of stories that invite visitors to consider the complexity of the American experience across oceans and generations.
As the first major exhibition to examine the impact of extending Manifest Destiny beyond North America, “Imagining an Archipelago” challenges the common perception of the United States as a purely continental nation. Featuring approximately 50 works, the exhibition centers islands that came under U.S. control following the Treaty of Paris (1898), including Puerto Rico and Guam, which remain U.S. territories today.
“‘Imagining an Archipelago’ offers a poetic response to the histories and power structures that continue to shape our world,” said Jacqueline Terrassa, the Carolyn Muzzy director of the Colby College Museum of Art. “Whether subverting or reimagining the traditional narratives that have dominated each of their communities, the artists invite us to see archipelagos not as isolated islands, but as networks of connection.”
The exhibition’s themes include Food; Land, Sea and Sky; Religion and Spirituality; and Military Occupations, along with a major section organized geographically to highlight the uniqueness of each island. Concepts of cultural and political self-determination, indigeneity, migration, climate crisis and resilience unite the exhibition.
Newly commissioned works by Jerome Reyes, Sara Jimenez, Mariquita “Micki” Davis, Isa Gagarin and Camille Hoffman expand the exhibitions immersive environment and deepen its engagement with materiality, memory and place.
Many works in “Imagining an Archipelago” explore how history is constructed, remembered and interpreted. Stephanie Syjuco’s “Afterimages” series reworks archival photographs of Filipinos displayed at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, exposing the staged nature of colonial representation. Gamaliel Rodriguez’s 2022 mixed-media work “Correctional Faith” centers a church that was part of Puerto Rico’s Cárcel Correccional de Menores de Cabo Rojo, a juvenile correctional prison that operated from 1908-2013. Today, the site has been transformed into a public recreation space, where traces of its past persist alongside new uses. Using acrylic, ink and gold leaf on paper, Rodriguez captures the emotional complexity between decay, memory and the legacies of colonial infrastructure.
In the photograph “Tai Ulu” (2021), Roquin-Jon Quichocho Siongco reflects on how CHamoru ancestors dealt with death, including the practice of preserving and venerating skulls, represented by the artist’s own headless nude body surrounded by culturally significant materials from the Mariana Islands. Cuban-born abstract painter Zilia Sánchez merges human, terrestrial and celestial forms in her 1975 painting “Lunar negro con tatuaje.” The composition evokes an ambiguity that could be perceived as constellations, ocean currents or bodily markings.
The exhibition was formed in close collaboration with artists through two Islands Project Convenings in 2022 and 2024, both held in Waterville, Maine and on Allen Island, part of Colby College’s Island Campus in Muscongus Bay. Shared meals at the gatherings inspired the inclusion of food as an exhibition theme, prompted through discussions about shared culinary traditions, food sovereignty and the impact of colonization on island agriculture. A video by Judith Escalona included in the exhibition documents the 2024 Islands Project Convening.
“The ‘Imagining an Archipelago’ project has from the beginning sought to center artists and invite them to shape the development of the exhibition,” said Jessamine Batario, the Linde Family Foundation curator of academic engagement at the Colby Museum. “The conceptual premise of an imagined archipelago guides creative connections between islands geographically located in different oceans and separated by thousands of miles. By juxtaposing a diversity of perspectives within a complex network of shared legacies, the exhibition visualizes a solidarity strengthened by difference.”
A fully illustrated publication includes scholarly essays from the fields of art history and education that document and expand on the exhibition’s themes along with transcripts of artist discussions translated and published in English, Spanish, Filipino and CHamoru. The book includes contributions from Jessamine Batario, Lian Ladia, Alexandra Méndez, Craig Santos Perez, Stephanie Syjuco, Jacqueline Terrassa, Marina Tyquiengco with Fran Nededog Lujan, Adriana Zavala and Phoebe Zipper, with creative direction from Megan Carey, the Barbara Alfond director of exhibitions and publications. A historical timeline by Jan Maghinay Padios is presented like geological strata throughout the book, providing additional context about significant events and movements across Cuba, Guam, the Philippines and Puerto Rico through phases of colonialism, development, resistance and globalization. The book was designed by Kimberly Varella at Content Object, with help from Gabrielle Pulgar and is co-published and distributed domestically and internationally by DelMonico Books/D.A.P.
Following its debut at the Colby College Museum of Art, “Imagining an Archipelago” will embark on a national tour, including showings at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico in San Juan, Puerto Rico (Aug. 20 2027-Feb. 6, 2028), a presentation made possible by a generous grant from the Mellon Foundation; the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco (March 17-Aug. 13, 2028); and the Newark Museum of Art in New Jersey (Sept. 28, 2028-Feb. 18, 2029).
Support for this exhibition and its national tour is provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Teiger Foundation, Terra Foundation for American Art and Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Imagining an Archipelago
Jul 11, 2026 – Jun 6, 2027
Colby College Museum of Art
Waterville, Maine, USA
