Jo Cosme

Jo Cosme is a Native Puerto Rican (Boricua) multidisciplinary artist who uses photo, digital art and installations to address social issues surrounding the ongoing colonization of her Homeland, Puerto Rico (Borikén). A year after Hurricane María, she was displaced to Seattle, WA and was shocked by how little North Americans know about the exploitative relationship their Country has with hers. This inspired her to create works that would provoke reflections on the effects of disaster capitalism and colonialism in Borikén.

By 2014, Cosme completed a BFA at the School of Fine Arts in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Her work’s been exhibited in places such as Museo las Américas (PR), Photographic Center Northwest (Seattle), Shunpike’s Storefronts program (Seattle) and Galerie Rivoli 59 (Paris). She was also invited to give talks at Shunpike’s ACES program, Allied Media Conference (Detroit) and MIT Game Lab (Massachusetts) to name a few. Cosme was recently awarded the new project grant from Northwest Film Forum’s Collective Power Fund + Andy Warhol Foundation (Seattle) and was selected as part of the Puerto Rico Fellowship Award at the Asset for Artists Residency program in MASS MoCA (Massachusetts).

All grant awards will help fund her first solo show titled: Welcome to Paradise. Here, she will showcase the contrasting imagery and experience perceived by North American tourists and expats compared to the reality of what Native Boricuas live daily in what textbooks call: the World’s Oldest Colony, La Isla del Encanto or The Island of Enchantment.