Raelis Vasquez is a visual artist based in New York and New Jersey who has exhibited extensively throughout the United States and is currently an MFA student at Columbia University, New York. His works function as platforms for engaging in conversations; coalescing personal and political themes regarding his experience as an Afro-Latino artist in the United States.

Vasquez’s devotion to representation as a means of inclusion and presence explores the convoluted histories of the Dominican Republic in relation to the United States. Growing up, Vasquez was confronted with inaccurate, stereotypical representations of his Afro-Latino ancestry. By using the Western style of painting as a means of protest, he more accurately depicts the narrative of people of color, unveiling historical silences of family, societal life and the traumatic and disruptive experience of immigration.