This panel draws from the themes of La Vaughn Belle’s work in the exhibition Liberating Light, which centers the Black female body as a site of historical migration, trauma, and resilience. Invited speakers interrogate the role of gendered subjects in Afro-Caribbean art and culture. Panelists include Barbara Abadía Rexach, San Francisco State University; Ana-Hilda Figueroa de Jesús, independent curator; Irene López, Kenyon College; and Noralis Rodriguez-Coss, Gonzaga University; moderated by Postdoctoral Fellow in Museum Practices and Scholarly Engagements at The Gund, Dr. Diana Flatto.

Speaker Bios

Bárbara Abadía Rexach

Bárbara Abadía-Rexach, daughter of Olga Esther and Germán, was born in Fajardo on September 26. She is a Maroon communicator and activist anthropologist, an anti-racist leader, and an Afro-transfeminist. She earned a Bachelor's degree (2001) and a Master's degree (2006) in Communication from the University of Puerto Rico at Río Piedras. She holds a PhD (2015) in Sociocultural Anthropology from The University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of AFROfeminista: Raza y mujer en Puerto Rico (Periodística Editorial, 2025) and Musicalizando la raza. La racialización en Puerto Rico a través de la música (Ediciones Puerto, 2012). She has published chapters, articles, essays, and op-ed columns on racialization and matrices of oppression. She combines her anti-racist political activism with teaching, serving as an associate professor of Afro-Latinities at San Francisco State University. She is a member of Colectivo Ilé, where she co-produces and co-moderates the radio program NEGRAS. She is a member of the Black Latinas Know Collective.

Ana-Hilda Figueroa de Jesús

Curator, art historian and critic based in San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico, and New York City. Considering Caribbean, Latin American and Latinx communities, her research focuses on memory, affect and notions of tragedy/paradise in Contemporary art. She collaborated with UNESCO, ArtNexus, The Latinx Project, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Smithsonian Institution, University of Puerto Rico as well as art galleries and private collections. Ana Hilda has been recognized by the Association of Museums of the Caribbean (2024), the International Association of Art Critics (2022) and the Council on Library and Information Resources (2020). She holds a master's degree in Latin American and Caribbean Studies and an advanced certificate in Museum Studies from New York University (2025) and a bachelor's degree in Art History from the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus (2021).

Irene López

Irene López, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology at Kenyon College. A cross-cultural and clinical psychologist, her work examines culture and trauma, particularly in relation to violence against women. Drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives, she explores how colonial histories and institutional failures contribute to patterns of suffering that are often treated as individual pathology. She is currently co-editing The Cambridge Handbook of Latine Psychology.

Noralis Rodriguez-Coss

Dr. Noralis Rodríguez-Coss is a Puerto Rican feminist scholar and activist, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Gonzaga University in Washington State. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, she later moved to the United States to pursue graduate studies. She is a co-founder of the academic field of Island Feminisms and the Island Feminisms Project. Her interdisciplinary scholarship examines gender violence; the social construction of gender and islands; feminist activism and public protest; and global and transnational feminist perspectives. Dr. Rodriguez-Coss earned an MA in Women’s Studies from Southern Connecticut State University and a PhD in Feminist Studies from the University of Washington, Seattle.