JURY / CURATORIAL COMMITTEE

Hernán Pacuruco

Hernán Pacurucu

NYLAAT 2025 Curatorial Committee & Jury

He is currently the Executive Director of the Municipal Foundation of the Cuenca Biennial, as well as a contemporary art critic and curator. He is a PhD candidate in Higher Education.

He has worked as an undergraduate professor at the University of Cuenca and the San Francisco University of Quito and is currently a postgraduate professor in the Master’s Program in Cultural Management at UPS.

He is the author of 40 books on topics including art, art criticism, art theory, and the philosophy of art. Additionally, he has contributed to 16 specialized contemporary art journals and numerous articles.

He has curated over 300 exhibitions at museums and galleries worldwide. He currently serves as the Executive Director of the Cuenca Biennial and curator of OFF Contemporary Art.

He has actively participated in 65 biennials around the world.

Iris Lamo

Iris Lam Chen

NYLAAT 2025 Curatorial Committee & Jury

A master’s candidate in Arts Administration at the City University of New York and holder of a Master’s degree in Strategic Management from the State Distance University of Costa Rica, she has been serving as a cultural manager and curator at the Cultural Center of Spain in Costa Rica (CCECR) since 2018. She is also the founder and director of the cultural management organization Global Metro Art since 2015 and a member of the Board of Directors of the New York Odyssey Film Festival (NYOFF).

Her area of expertise encompasses visual and contemporary arts, with a focus on themes such as feminism, LGBTQIA+, migration, and sinology. Her work is centered on strategic management, the art market, and fostering interinstitutional partnerships between public, private, independent, and academic entities.

She has been recognized for her ability to create alliances and projects both nationally and internationally, as well as for coordinating Costa Rican participations in festivals, biennials, and international exhibitions such as Juannio (Guatemala), the Contemporary Art Biennial SACO (Chile), the International Video Art Festival of Camagüey (Cuba), the Tijuana Triennial (Mexico), the Beijing Biennale (China), among many others.

As an educator, her courses focus on the art market and strategic management. She has contributed as an author of art columns for Costa Rican media and publications such as Hypermedia Magazine, Artishock, and Mujeres Mirando Mujeres.

Ricardo Ramón

Ricardo Ramón Jarne

NYLAAT 2025 Curatorial Committee & Jury

The Spanish historian, art critic, curator, and cultural manager Ricardo Ramón Jarne has spent 23 years in the Americas directing the Cultural Centers of Spain in the Dominican Republic, Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, and Costa Rica. He has led numerous cultural projects linked to Spanish Cooperation, using culture as a fundamental tool for development. His initiatives are characterized by a strong political and social focus.

Ricardo is a staunch advocate for culture as an essential element for integration, the promotion of freedoms, equality, equity, and ethical commitment. He holds a PhD in Art History from the University of Zaragoza and has curated numerous international exhibitions in Spain and the Americas.

He has collaborated with various public and private institutions, delivered lectures and seminars, and authored an extensive and noteworthy bibliography on art history, cooperation, management, and critique. He served as the general curator for the Soledades Urbanas project for the Madrid City Council.

His work is interdisciplinary and interinstitutional, consistently engaging with partners from diverse sectors who contribute imaginative and cutting-edge solutions and proposals. Ricardo is internationally recognized as an unconventional, utopian, and radical cultural manager.

Rocio Aranda

Rocio Aranda-Alvarado

NYLAAT 2025 Curatorial Committee & Jury

Rocío Aranda-Alvarado is part of the Creativity and Free Expression team. She joined Ford in 2018 after serving as curator at El Museo del Barrio for nearly a decade. In that role, she presented visual arts and programming that reflected the history and culture of El Barrio as well as the greater Latinx and Latin American diaspora. Prior to that, from 2000 to 2009, she was the curator at the Jersey City Museum.

Concurrent to her work in museums, Rocío taught as an adjunct professor; consulted and curated independently on Latinx and Latin American art and culture; and published and advised, in both a scholarly and curatorial capacity, at the Smithsonian Institution.

She earned her PhD in art history from the City University of New York’s Graduate Center.



Alexis Mendoza

NYLAAT Executive Director / 2025 Jury

Alexis Mendoza (born 1972) is a Cuban artist, writer and independent curator, based in New York City. His multidisciplinary work focuses on painting, sculpture, printmaking, drawing and installation. His art explores the transitioning and overlapping of colors as a metaphor for the Afro-Cuban customs, rituals and traditions.

Mendoza has exhibited his artworks in museums and galleries in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, England, France, Germany, Mexico, Netherlands, Peru, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States.

Mendoza’s work has been written about in Cuban Art News, Sing For Hope, Artnet, JCAST, HFFNY and Manhattan Times.

He is a co-founder and co-creator of The Bronx Latin American Art Biennial[9] which showcases the works of Latinx artists from New York and abroad.

In 2019 the art biennial evolved to the New York Latin American Art Triennial which explored issues such as migration, women’s rights and social justice while celebrating Hispanic heritage.

Naivy Perez

Naivy Pérez

NYLAAT Deputy Director / 2025 Jury

Naivy Pérez is a multidisciplinary artist, designer, and curator based in New York City. Her work explores the intersection of control structures and individual consciousness, blending art, technology, and experiential processes.

Pérez holds a Gold Diploma in Visual Arts from the Higher Institute of Art (ISA) in Havana, Cuba, and furthered her studies at the Provincial Academy of Visual Arts “Raúl Corrales” and “Raúl Martínez.” She also participated in a prestigious technology and robotics scholarship at Kungliga Konsthögskolan in Stockholm, Sweden, which deeply influenced her innovative artistic approach.

As the Founder and Executive Director of the Experimental Loop International Video Art Festival and Vice Executive Director of the New York Latin American Art Triennial (NYLAAT), Pérez has curated major exhibitions. She also contributed to the Tenth Havana Biennial, showcasing her expertise in global and interdisciplinary curatorial projects.

Ezequiel Taveras

Ezequiel Taveras

NYLAAT Chief Curator / 2025 Jury

The constant questioning of existence, life, death, pain, and love finds aesthetic expression in symbols. These symbols offer structure to abstract concepts, aiding understanding and serving as a cathartic exploration of existence within contemporary life.