A Chavoneros Journey: Patricia Encarnación on Art, Identity and Community

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Dominican-born artist and curator Patricia Encarnación, a graduate of the Chavón School of Design, has spent more than a decade in New York building a multidisciplinary practice that bridges art, research and community. Through projects like Tropical Limerence and her curatorial platform Ojos Caribe, she explores how identity, politics and belonging take shape across borders.

Her earliest artistic impulses began in the 1990s — painting the living room wall with her mother’s nail polish, observing women transform in the family hair salon or riding with her father along the Dominican border.

The salon became her first classroom, where aesthetics and survival intertwined. The border, meanwhile, raised questions about geography and power. “Those two spaces weren’t opposites but complements,” she says. “One taught me to see the intimate as an archive; the other taught me to question the official.”

Discovering a Language Through Art

For Encarnación, art wasn’t a single revelation but a process. “Looking, listening and questioning became ways to engage with reality,” she says. “Art became the tool to do that.”

As a child, she was drawn to what others overlooked. Those early instincts evolved into a practice that now spans ceramics, video and installation.

“When I began translating my questions into materials, I realized that was art,” she says. “Not out of idealism, but because it allowed me to hold and share the questions that have always lived in me.”

Chavón: Method, Community and Context

After finishing high school in 2009, Encarnación sought a place that felt “bigger than herself.” She found it at the Chavón School of Design, which balanced discipline with creative freedom.

“I wanted a school that taught me to think and make at the same time,” she recalls. “Chavón offered that rhythm — to test, fail, return and sharpen your eye from the territory itself.”

A postcard featuring artist Koco Toribio convinced her to apply. “From that moment, I did everything I could to get in. I’ve never regretted it.”

Just as important was the sense of community. “Much of what wasn’t in the curriculum, we built ourselves — through critique, collaboration and friendship. That network still sustains my work today.”

“At Chavón, I learned that every material choice carries histories of class, race, gender and place,” she says. “Form is never neutral.”

A Decade in New York

Building a career in New York, she admits, has been both demanding and rewarding. “The city offers everything at once — resources, contacts, noise — and that’s the trap. If you don’t filter, you get lost.”

Her approach has been deliberate: saying no often, applying for residencies and grants that align with her values, and working with institutions that offer real collaboration rather than visibility alone.

“Diasporic networks have been essential,” she says. “Friends, collaborators, colleagues — people who share tools, connections and rest.”

“The challenge isn’t getting in; it’s keeping your voice once you do,” she adds.

Rethinking Art Education

As both artist and curator, Encarnación believes art schools must prepare students for real-world practice — not just technique.

“They must teach students to think and make with awareness of class, race, gender, migration and disability,” she says. “Curricula should link theory and territory, involve community practitioners and include labs where students learn to budget, build and document their work.”

She also stresses ethics: “Before exhibiting ‘community,’ students should learn consent, shared authorship and fair compensation. We need to evaluate not just the final object, but the care that made it possible.”

Ojos Caribe: Reclaiming the Moving Image

Her curatorial platform Ojos Caribe grew from noticing how video art was often fragmented in galleries. “We wanted a space where Caribbean artists could speak in the first person — where works could circulate among islands and diasporas without being filtered through an external gaze,” she explains.

“Curating isn’t about filling a schedule — it’s about caring for duration, sound, context, translation and consent,” she says. “Video doesn’t just show; it weaves connections between those who film, those who watch and those who live what the work is thinking about.”

Tropical Limerence: A Living Archive

Encarnación’s long-term project Tropical Limerence began in 2017 as a reflection on radical love and power. She reclaims “limerence” not as romance but as “the obsessive, extractive attachment of the Global North toward communities of the Global Majority.”

The project unfolds in chapters across the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Martinique, Barcelona and New York, combining video essays, ceramics and fieldwork.

“I act as both artist and researcher,” she says. “I listen, interview, film and model objects that serve as living archives — ceramics made from local clay, carrying the same complexity as the conversations they come from.”

Each chapter builds on the next. “I don’t close one before starting another,” she explains. “They exist in relation. Tropical Limerence is a method — listening, deconstructing and returning a counter-narrative built in community.”

On Collaboration and Scale

Working with The Shed in New York allowed her to expand her process and scale. “It pushed the project both aesthetically and methodologically,” she notes.

Behind the scenes, she managed everything from budgets and insurance to logistics and technical coordination. “There was a sustained dialogue that protected the integrity of the work while solving logistics,” she says.

“The most rewarding part was treating the piece as a public conversation — how bodies move, what they hear first, how long they stay.”

Art, Design and Everyday Life

Encarnación sees art and design as parallel languages. “Both start with curiosity and creation,” she says. “But design often serves specific goals, while art opens broader social questions.”

“I want to bring social awareness from art into design, and clarity from design into art,” she adds. “With the goal of allowing both fields to enrich one another — so that design does not become trapped in the purely commercial, nor art isolated from everyday life.”

Advice for Emerging Artists

“There’s no single path,” she says. “Listen to the questions already living inside you and build from there.”

She encourages young artists to document their process, protect their health and value their time. “The work shouldn’t demand that you erase yourself.”

“Seek people who challenge and support you,” she says. “Learn to talk about contracts, budgets and time. Value your labor and that of others.”

Above all, she adds, “Remember your voice matters. We come from places often narrated by others — you have the right to tell your story from within, in your own rhythm and contradictions. Let art be that space.”

* Photos courtesy of Patricia Encarnación, initial interview done by Mavel Tejeda for Chavón School of Design