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Imna Arroyo

Imna Arroyo

New London, CT

Imna Arroyo is an Afro-Puerto Rican artist whose work weaves the threads of heritage and ecological veneration into a contemporary artistic dialogue.

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Travesias / Crossings Exhibition - Grandmothers. Grandfathers. Ancestors by Imna Arroyo
  • Travesias / Crossings Exhibition - Grandmothers...
Ancestors of the Passage:  A Healing Journey through the Middle Passage. (complete installation project) by Imna Arroyo
  • Ancestors of the Passage: A Healing Journey th..., 2004
  • Mixed Media
IROKO:  Tree of Life / Árbol de vida by Imna Arroyo
  • IROKO: Tree of Life / Árbol de vida, 2018
  • Woodcut on satin & Chiffon
    98.5 x 42 in
    (250.19 x 106.68 cm)
Yemaya Okute by Imna Arroyo
  • Yemaya Okute
Plegaria para una isla guerrera by Imna Arroyo
  • Plegaria para una isla guerrera
  • Xylography on amate paper
    70 x 40 in
    (177.8 x 101.6 cm)
Iroko: Yoruba Gaze by Imna Arroyo
  • Iroko: Yoruba Gaze, 2023
  • Mixed Media
IROKO  (complete installation project) by Imna Arroyo
  • IROKO (complete installation project), 2016-2017
  • Mixed Media
Lyman Allyn Installation View #1 by Imna Arroyo
  • Lyman Allyn Installation View #1
Lyman Allyn Installation View #2 by Imna Arroyo
  • Lyman Allyn Installation View #2
Legacy Installation / El Legado, Instalación by Imna Arroyo
  • Legacy Installation / El Legado, Instalación, 2004
  • Mixed Media
The Many Faces of Yemaya / Las Muchas Caras de Yemaya by Imna Arroyo
  • The Many Faces of Yemaya / Las Muchas Caras de ..., 2000-2001
  • Mixed Media
    101 x 33 in
    (256.54 x 83.82 cm)
Yemaya Installation (Las ,muchas caras de Yemaya y la casa de Yemaya) by Imna Arroyo
  • Yemaya Installation (Las ,muchas caras de Yemay..., 2002-2006
  • Mixed Media
    78 x 52 x 96 in
    (198.12 x 132.08 x 243.84 cm)
IROKO, Tree of Life video by Imna Arroyo
  • IROKO, Tree of Life video, 2017
Ancestors of the Passage:  Trail of Bones / Senda de Hueso Video by Imna Arroyo
  • Ancestors of the Passage: Trail of Bones / Sen..., 2006
Sankofa Installation:  Museo de las Americas, PR 2023-2024 by Imna Arroyo
  • Sankofa Installation: Museo de las Americas, P..., 1999
  • Mixed Media
Travesias | Crossings: Betancourt Professional Images 2024 JULY 05 - YEMAYA by Imna Arroyo
  • Travesias | Crossings: Betancourt Professional ...
 

Puerto Rican artist devoted to exploring connections between the African continent and the Diaspora in an on-going endeavor to reclaim a lost and scattered heritage. Arroyo draws upon the imagery, symbolism and language of the Yoruba traditions of Africa to express a majestically complex and sophisticated worldview. In her multidisciplinary practice, she finds inspiration in the concept that art-making can be a ritualized form of healing. 

"It is my intent to create Art that heals the deep-seated collective wounds of history, as well as to celebrate the vibrancy and relevance of a long denied ancestral legacy of self-expression", Imna Arroyo

Renowned scholar and Caribbean art and cultural critic, Yolanda Wood writes “… Imna Arroyo remains continually focused on those junctures where everything that is located outside the practices of hegemonic power, in the domains of the undervalued and subaltern, somehow meets. Settling within the space/time of these multiple references, she has inserted her own poetics based on life stories, autobiographical details, gender imprints, and the memories that inhabit them, all inscribed on the skin and in the reflections of the African subjects enslaved in times of modernity/coloniality and their descendants—which in fact we all are—and whose condition of existence the Barbadian writer George Lamming has identified as “a historical experience” in the Caribbean, yet one that certainly extends beyond the dominion of the plantations. From her migrant status, yet the bearer of a U.S. passport, Arroyo has succeeded in penetrating these silenced and hidden areas”.