A note: Sovereignty has much to do with the free, authentic self and the authority to embody that always, everywhere. However there is a discomfort, an irony evoked by the use of terms like “sovereignty” and “authority” in conversations around freedom. The continued imposition of hierarchies and power structures across humanity keeps it this way. So, until such structures are dismantled, until freedom is the only way, I am forced to use (and subvert) words born from positions and systems of power.
In the spirit of our free, authentic selves, I again introduce myself as Yasmín Hernández, a Brooklyn-born and raised Boricua. Art has been my primary tool in this life’s journey, though I began writing and journaling years before I started painting at age thirteen. As an activist, liberation is the root of all my art, contemplations, and actions. I am the creator of Rematriating Borikén, this interdisciplinary project born from my own personal journey and practice of rematriating the archipelago of my ancestors. CucubaNación, my new art space in Mayagüez, also serves as host to Rematriating Borikén. These have been my two main projects since Hurricane María forced me back into navigating darkness and considering Boricua Bioluminescence as medicine. This is a long overdue post on CucubaNación (and sovereignty), elaborating on this excerpt from an October 21st, 2022 post announcing the space:
Throughout my journey, I haven’t used the word sovereignty much. If I did, it was directly connected to my hopes for this homeland of mine. Reflecting today, I realize that my entire life’s journey has been an exercise in sovereignty. Not settling into full-time jobs, not vibing with bosses, not conforming into the confines of any space. The political content of my art deemed too radical before it was “trending.” And when Hurricanes made decolonial conversations “acceptable,” there still tends to be an exclusion of work and voices rooted in the long history of struggle against imperialism and colonial structures.
In the past months, I manifested what I did not know I was needing: A place to embody sovereignty. A storefront space in the urban center of Mayagüez to practice, curate and expand my own work within the community that fuels it. A space to craft programs, gatherings, featuring our people, our community in the ways that we are needing. Offer healing spaces and have the liberty to provide what we are needing, responding to, moving to, wanting to, expanding into.
CucubaNación opened as an artspace in November of 2022 on la Calle San Vicente en el pueblo de Mayagüez, directly across from my 2018 mural of the same name. Born from the darkness of colonialism, climate change and apagones (power outages), CucubaNación channels liberatory lessons of Boricua bioluminescence. It was conceived in the illuminated waters of Vieques, where I witnessed reflections of the cosmos during several trips between 2006 and 2013. Vieques inspired me to paint our ancestors as light beings and fueled my 2014 move to Borikén, my ancestral womb.
Fast forward to 2017, post-Ir-María darkness displayed epic constellations of cucubanos (bioluminescent click beetles) y luciérnagas (fireflies) during the four months we were without electricity in our home. Mesmerized by bioluminescence yet again, grateful to have a guiding light through the darkness, I conceptualized CucubaNación as a new art series. It was born with the mural and a related work on canvas after May Day 2018 when San Juan riot squads tear-gassed crowds (including families and children) protesting austerity, school closures and more. The mural was catharsis for the shock and rage I felt knowing children, students and other protestors had been tear gassed. Created with an invitation from the then Betances Gallery on Calle San Vicente to coincide with la Campechada dedicated to Eugenio María de Hostos, it features Hostos’ quote: Para ver ciertas cosas, se necesitan otros ojos, los ojos del Espiritu. (To see certain things you need other eyes, the eyes of the spirit.)
Over the years, bioluminescence became both muse and medicine, especially after a difficult eye diagnosis and undergoing emergency ocular surgery in 2020. I was called to activate my other eyes. Recovering and living the strict pandemic lockdown with the rest of Puerto Rico and the world, I too entered a cave, emerging periodically to connect virtually, but it just wasn’t doing it for me. I began putting out the intention to be back in community.
In the summer of 2022, we set out to support cultural ventures that rose in resistance during the pandemic closures. First was Taller Kenuati in Mayagüez, from who I had commissioned some maracas and where we took our sons for an higüera workshop with Bárbara Pérez. Next was un taller de bomba en pareja at Estudio 353 (which occupied the space of the former Galería Betances that shut down with the pandemic). That was when we learned about the vacant space next door. The suggestion of opening a space was the furthest thing from my mind, even knowing that my home studio did not provide for my desire to host studio sessions with rematriators as I had planned, or workshops and classes. Nor did I have the space to display my work. But I was unconvinced that renting a space was the answer. There seemed to be a hundred obstacles keeping me from seeing the opportunity as possible, sustainable.
Then one morning, a message arrived from Bomba artist, teacher, activist, historian Jamie Pérez of Estudio 353. It was a photo of my CucubaNación mural taken from the door of the vacant space. On the street there was a path that seemed to connect the door of the space to the mural. She sent it with a voice note remarking on the connection to my cucubano mural glowing green. That was it! The space claimed itself, named itself, decided its theme.
CucubaNación expanded to an intimate community art space lifting the lessons of Boricua bioluminescence to envision, embody a new liberated nation of light. Thinking back to genius Boricua artist Pepon Osorio’s store-front installations, I played with the possibility of expanding the CucubaNación concept beyond the canvas, spilling from the confines of the stretchers onto black walls in calligraphy, images, installations inspired by our bioluminescent boricuas. The lighting, mimicking tiny bioluminescent creatures that collectively join in a luminous force, would transform the space into a kind of portal, an intimate womb that you step into to reflect on darkness, share sparks, incubate ideas, expand on these with other light beings. Forced to postpone the opening celebration because of another extended power outage, our first event was a healing space of massage,
acupuncture, art and bomba within the bewildering fog left by Hurricane Fiona.
It is liberating to have a gathering place, especially emerging from these pandemic times in which we lived tucked away in our caves. A place to call a meeting, host a discussion, a jangueo, a class, a workshop. Lo que nos dé la gana. Hang a painting. Bring it down. Hang another. Paint the walls black cuz you never did vibe with the white box. Exhibit without an invitation or permission. Host a program without a proposal that needs approval. Let what’s grown in your heart and spirit flow free…. Sovereignty.
Our first workshop series was Colors, Chakras and Self-Healing for women. I first offered these classes in our old home in Moca. We had barely been here a year and were still unsettled in our transition. Hosting classes in our home, our personal space where we battled daily to survive here, persist here, became too much of a challenge. I stopped them before completing the cycle. Years two and three here I taught art at a K through 12 school in Aguadilla, having gone against a personal rule. In NYC I vowed never to teach at a school, preferring to work with community organizations and art museums. Of all museums, the ones that I made my home were el Museo del Barrio and the Studio Museum in Harlem. It was important for me to be in spaces where my people could see themselves reflected on the gallery walls. I knew how affirming, empowering that experience could be for children, adults, myself. Believing I could offer some of what I did back in NYC, I took the teaching position, but the grades and discipline components wedged a gap between the children and their own creativity. Then came a change in the administration. I left. In a journal entry, I vowed (again) never to teach in another school, unless it was my own freedom school. But a freedom school was a faraway dream, like moving to Puerto Rico was. I vowed to retire here one day, after living most of my life in my hometown of NYC. Instead, I left NYC at 38. My brother used to say, “God don’t like plans.” Sometimes we plan, but most times things go down how they need to, when they need to.
Last summer I learned of this lil space (and it be little) and though there were doubts, the universe let it be known that it was where I needed to be. The space, for all its intimacy, delivers big on intensity. Little by little, not sure if a freedom school, but certainly an autonomous space unfolds. Sometimes we are called to skip over obstacles like two-stepping on a second line. The universe will provide. Each creation will bring its own resources if you have the courage to follow inspiration from your crown to your root, allow it to manifest in material form. Most times I don’t have a long-term plan. The events, conversations, workshops arise from the last gathering and the needs that revealed themselves there, the energy from the exchange of those who gathered, or spiritual guidance orchestrating some plan beyond what I can see. Sometimes the space looks empty. You light incense and burn it under the portraits of every spirit you remember in the space. Know you ain’t alone. That exchange activates the energy. Causes things to happen that you hadn’t planned or envisioned. You are called to trust and watch what it was all for. So many coming through share some capacity to channel, to feel, hear or see things others don’t. Los otros ojos a que Hostos se refiere. Drawn to light, like molecules pulsating at similar sovereign frequencies, we gravitate towards one another.
We are all molecules of the same elements, gravitating more efficiently as we elevate to vibrate at the same phenomenal frequency. (-From the Rematriating Borikén Manifesto)
From this space where I share my art, offer healing spaces, workshops, gatherings, rematriation dialogues, I witness the convergence of all my projects, all my work, all my selves. CucubaNación offers curated bioluminescence-inspired spaces to humbly learn, exchange, disseminate lessons in light, sustainability, symbiosis, and interdependence as innovative approaches to healing, decolonizing, liberating.
We have completed our first two cycles of classes. The space, with its exhibition dedicated to bioluminescence has brought this luminous theme to visitors, groups, and to other spaces. The bioluminescent art workshops were taken to la Brigada Solidaria del Oeste in San Germán thanks to MAC en el Barrio and to local youth of el Campamento CUA de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, Mayagüez. We have hosted groups of students from Colgate University in upstate New York and youth organizers from Movement Education Outdoors in Rhode Island. Both groups also visited the bioluminescent bay of Lajas.
Though our first months focused on the light of cucubanos, fireflies and
dinoflagellates, this summer we are diving deeper into the Rematriating Borikén project whose aesthetic inspiration lies at the bottom of the Puerto Rico Trench. We have begun hosting studio sessions with folks on the rematriation journey. In the following months the space will become the studio for the creation of the Rematriating Borikén portrait series and will continue to offer rematriation dialogues and gatherings.
In closing, sovereignty to some has to do with money and ownership. I am not the owner of this space. Rematriation challenges how we view currency and abundance. My landlord is a Boricua neighbor with his own cultural space, committed to keeping this street dedicated to arts and culture. As such, Estudio 353 are my neighbors to the right, offering bomba workshops. To my left is D’Lab, a hip hop shop now offering exhibitions of urban and graffiti artists. At the corner, the lounge Betances 100 Sur persists through various closings. It is not to say that gentrification does not exist and has not already ravaged so many local spaces. As gentrification looms so does climate change. Taller Kenuati was forced to move from their waterfront location following flooding from Hurricane Fiona. The constant flux and transience of spaces opening, closing, cultural workers leaving, forced out, is dizzying. Space ownership becomes more and more challenging in this continued colony, as is the essence of colonialism. Space sovereignty in this case means having an affordable rent from a Boricua landlord committed to keeping cultural initiatives like mine alive and well. (Conversations on permits, licenses and registration in Puerto Rico is another convo for another time) Space sovereignty is having full say on what happens there without needing permission from somebody or having to report about it. Space sovereignty as an artist is ultimately the freedom to have a place to envision, create and share your work and to exchange and build with the people and communities that fuel your work, and who you work to serve. (Even within today’s capitalist hustle to earn the funds to sustain it.) It is liberating and nurturing to go back to interacting with actual warm-blooded humans, beyond the screens of the matrix.
I am grateful to every light of every cucubane, dinoflagellate that has entered and fueled la CucubaNación. Together we work to build a luminous nation of healing, rematriation, and liberation.
For updates follow CucubaNacion on Instagram and Facebook
To support visit yasminhernandezart.com/cucubanacion where you can make a donation, buy art or soon book a virtual or in-person talk or workshop.
Yasmín Hernández is an artist born in Brooklyn, based in el oeste de Borikén in the archipelago known as Puerto Rico. She got her street smarts growing up in East New York, Brooklyn and studied art at Cornell University. She considers her graduate level work to have been teaching the art of black and brown peoples to local communities at Taller Puertorriqueño in Philadelphia, El Museo del Barrio and the Studio Museum in Harlem. Her art, writing and activism is rooted in rematriation and liberation practices. Rematriating Borikén is her project lifting the conceptual and physical return to her ancestral homeland as part of a greater decolonial strategy. CucubaNación in Mayagüez is Yasmin’s art/ community space dedicated to Boricua bioluminescence. She also shares her art at yasminhernandezart.com and rematriation chronicles at rematriatingboriken.com .
Rematriating Borikén 
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