Date of Award

5-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in Art History and Visual Culture

Department

Art

First Advisor

Khristin Landry

Second Advisor

Stefanie Snider

Third Advisor

Caroline Paganussi

Abstract

This thesis examines the work of Afro-Puerto Rican artist Nitza Tufiño through Yoruba iconography, diasporic memory, and gendered Nuyorican identity. Grounded within the cultural and political context of the Nuyorican Movement of the 1960s and 1970s and, this study argues that Tufiño’s visual practice reframes suppressed African spiritual symbols through a woman-centered perspective, positioning Black femininity and spiritual labor as sites of resistance to colonial erasure and racial marginalization. Drawing upon Yoruba-derived cosmologies, Santería, and processes of visual syncretism, Tufiño integrates African, Indigenous Taíno, and Caribbean traditions to articulate a gendered visual language rooted in care, ritual, and collective memory.

Using close visual analysis, archival research, and postcolonial and iconographic methodologies, this thesis examines Tufiño’s engagement with printmaking and public art as extensions of Yoruba concepts of ritual repetition, reproduction, and communal labor, processes historically associated with women’s cultural knowledge. Her practice challenges dominant narratives in Puerto Rican art history that privilege Spanish colonial heritage and male-centered artistic canons while marginalizing Afro-diasporic and feminine modes of visual expression. By situating Tufiño’s work within institutions such as El Museo del Barrio and Taller Boricua, this study positions her as a critical yet underexamined figure in Afro-Latinx visual culture. Ultimately, this thesis demonstrates how Yoruba iconography operates as a gendered visual system through which Black womanhood, spirituality, and diasporic identity are actively reclaimed and reimagined within the Nuyorican experience.

Research Highlights

  • The Problem: Afro-Puerto Rican artistic production, particularly by women, remains underexamined in art historical discourse due to colonial hierarchies that privilege Spanish heritage over African and Indigenous Taíno roots. 

  • The Method: This thesis uses close visual analysis, archival research, iconographic methodology, and postcolonial/Black feminist theory to examine the work of Nitza Tufiño through Yoruba-derived cosmologies and Nuyorican identity. 

  • Quantitative Finding: Nitza Tufiño was born in 1949; the study centers on the Nuyorican Movement of the 1960s and 1970s; Puerto Rico was ceded to the United States in 1898; the Jones-Shafroth Act granted U.S. citizenship in 1917; the 2000 U.S. Census reported 80% of the island population identified as White and 8% as Black. 

  • Qualitative Finding: Tufiño’s practice reframes suppressed African spiritual symbols through a woman-centered perspective; Yoruba iconography operates as a gendered system to reclaim Black womanhood and spiritual labor; printmaking serves as a communal medium for cultural affirmation and resistance against colonial erasure.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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