‘Imagining an Archipelago’ connects island histories at Colby College Museum of Art

Art connects islands across thousands of miles in “Imagining an Archipelago: Art from Cuba, Guam, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Their Diasporas,” on view July 11, 2026 through June 6, 2027 at the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville. The exhibition brings together approximately 50 works by more than 40 contemporary artists — spanning powerful sculptures, paintings and photographs to immersive video and multimedia installations — whose connections to the island communities of Cuba, Guam, the Philippines and Puerto Rico explore the layered realities of life shaped by U.S. expansion.

“Imagining an Archipelago” is the first major exhibition to use contemporary art to examine the impact of extending Manifest Destiny beyond North America. Challenging the perception of the United States as a purely continental nation, the exhibition centers islands that came under U.S. control following the Treaty of Paris in 1898 — and in the cases of Puerto Rico and Guam, remain so 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 show.

Several newly commissioned works are featured, including projected text by Jerome Reyes, ceramics by Sara Jimenez, Mariquita “Micki” Davis’ large-scale cyanotype on canvas and Isa Gagarin’s painting on fused plastic. Camille Hoffman’s site-specific installation will blend art and architecture into an immersive environment, with Hoffman painting directly on the walls and floor and affixing found objects throughout a transitional corridor linking the American art collection in the museum’s Lunder Wing to “Imagining an Archipelago.”

Many works in the exhibition explore how history is constructed, remembered and interpreted. Stephanie Syjuco reworks archival photographs of Filipinos displayed at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair in the “Afterimages” series (2021). By folding and crumpling their reproductions before translating them into photogravures, she underscores the staged and fabricated nature of the originals. 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 to 2013. The site has since 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 developed in close collaboration with artists through two Islands Project Convenings in 2022 and 2024, both held in Waterville 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, prompting 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 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 accompanies the exhibition, with scholarly essays from the fields of art history and education, a timeline and transcripts of artist discussions translated and published in English, Spanish, Filipino and CHamoru. Contributions come from Batario, Lian Ladia, Alexandra Méndez, Craig Santos Perez, Syjuco, 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 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 assistance from Gabrielle Pulgar, and is co-published and distributed domestically and internationally by DelMonico Books/D.A.P.

Following its debut at the Colby Museum, “Imagining an Archipelago” will travel to the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico in San Juan (Aug. 20, 2027 through Feb. 6, 2028), a presentation made possible by a grant from the Mellon Foundation; the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco (March 17 through Aug. 13, 2028); and the Newark Museum of Art in New Jersey (Sept. 28, 2028 through Feb. 18, 2029).

Support for the 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.

The Colby College Museum of Art is at 5600 Mayflower Hill in Waterville. Call 207-859-5600, email museum@colby.edu, or go to museum-exhibitions.colby.edu for more information.