Chemi Rosado-Seijo
San Juan
Born in Vega Alta, Puerto Rico, Chemi Rosado-Seijo graduated from the painting department of the Puerto Rico School of Visual Arts in 1997. In 1998, he worked with Michy Marxuach to open a gallery that transformed into a not-for-profit organization presenting resources and exhibitions for contemporary artists in Puerto Rico. In 2000, Rosado had his first solo show at the Joan Miro Foundation in Barcelona, including interventions on billboards around the city. Since 2002, he has worked with residents of the El Cerro community, a poor neighborhood south of San Juan, to present public art projects, workshops and other community initiatives. In 2006, he inaugurated La Perla’s Bowl, a sculpture built with residents of San Juan’s La Perla community that functions as both a skateboarding ramp and a pool. Since 2009, Rosado-Seijo has been organizing exhibitions in his apartment in Santurce, creating a center for meeting and exchange in the Puerto Rican contemporary art scene. Rosado-Seijo’s work was included in the Whitney Biennial in 2017.
La Perla’s Portrait
Chemi Rosado-Seijo is an artist who uses organizing, visual art, and sculpture to tell the story of his Puerto Rican identity and community.
Artist BioLa Perla’s Portrait is an annual kite festival organized with residents from San Juan, in Puerto Rico’s La Perla community, a marginalized urban neighborhood located on a hill outside the old San Juan walls. Through workshops bringing together most members of this community and others, La Perla residents will learn how to make, personalize and fly their own kites. Then on a specific day, at the same time and with the same length of the thread, residents and volunteers will fly their kites in an action that will reflect the character and topography of the community on the sky. The kite festival will be documented through photos and video, which will be exhibited in museums, galleries and other spaces.