Between 2012 and 2013 he worked at Casita María Center for Art and Education in the South Bronx where he engaged with the community by organizing and developing art related workshops for youth and families around the Bronx. These programs allowed Cruet to have an opportunity to be part of a team of art educators focused in the visual and performing arts at the Lincoln Center, developing curriculum for education and surveying community participation for a variety of programs around New York City.
In the past, he has developed some art projects that have been significant points in his career. In 2017, Cruet presented the project “Between Us, Entre Nosotros,” which was an audiovisual and interactive piece that recreated the landscape of a beach that has stopped in time. In addition, the installation also had the element of sand which covered the ground, this element enabled the audience to interact with the piece thus leaving traces of themselves within the art work. This element allowed for the testimonies of the audience and invited us to analyze the contradictions of the space itself on issues related to culture and rituals that take place where the land and the ocean meet.
In 2019, Cruet participated in an exhibition titled Private, Public and InBetween at the Green Hill Gallery, Kulturschöpfer, in Berlin, Germany. During this exhibition, the gallery was turned into an immersive art installation that alluded to a living environment. This exhibition challenged the notion of private and public and what lies in between by engaging with interactive and thought provoking artworks that make visible the issues about private, public and In between.
Cruet is currently culminating the multidisciplinary art project titled “Rhizophora” at the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo in Quito, Ecuador. This project addresses the relationships and frictions between the fragile state of the mangrove ecosystems, by analyzing the social and political effects that threaten its disappearance around the world.
Cruet’s art practice employs multiple media, including experimental digital printing processes, performance and audiovisual installations that confront and discuss issues concerning ecology, geopolitics and technology. His artworks have been showcased in group exhibitions at the the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico (2013), Bronx River Art Center solo exhibition titled “Lionel Cruet: In-Between” (2015), Bronx Museum of Art (2017); the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse (2017); and in Australia, Chile, Ecuador, Germany, México, United States, among others. These and other projects have been reviewed by Made in Mind Magazine, designboom, Terremoto.mx, Artishock, Daily Serving California College of the Arts, and Latinx Spaces, among others.
In 2020, he developed an independent pilot program in Puerto Rico, banasta: residencia artistica, which offers puerrtorrican artist the opportunity to participate in a residency with critique sessions that enable the development of artistic production all while providing a space for conversations about processes. Cruet works with multiple organizations that promote art and aesthetic education for immigrant youth, building community and preparing them for their academic achievements in transition to college in the United States.
