Puerto Rico’s National Forest Becomes a Living Laboratory for Art and Ecology

Bringing art into a protected national rainforest—the largest in the U.S. Forest Service system—requires not only intense, multilateral curatorial thinking but also empathy that extends beyond the human to nature itself. It demands stepping outside the dominant anthropocentric paradigm that has historically shaped much of Western art and instead collaborating with nature to create symbiotically rather than in opposition. It is a practice of reattunement to natural rhythms and cycles—a form of listening as much as shaping. “It’s a continuous learning, from nature and from the artist,” Georgie Vega, director and curator of ArteYUNQUE, told Observer. The founder of theartwalkpr, Vega, who has overseen the initiative since its launch, is a well-established figure in the Puerto Rican art community, with over 20 years of experience conceiving and promoting exhibitions across the island’s museums.

Now in its third edition, ArteYUNQUE brings art into deep dialogue with the half-kilometer Science and Conservation Trail at El Portal de El Yunque, the main visitor center of El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico.

The project originated with the U.S. Forest Service, a federal agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as part of an agency-wide initiative to increase public access to nature. In 2017, Hurricane Maria brought Puerto Rico to its knees, claimed lives and left the island in a prolonged state of emergency, and El Yunque was nearly obliterated. The proposal emerged as part of a government-backed renovation campaign to restore the forest’s infrastructure and reopen it to visitors. “I came here a few months after, and it was like a bomb had been here. There was nothing left,” Laura Rivera Ayala, who recently returned to Puerto Rico after several years in New York and now works full-time with Vega on the project, explained.

What the Forest Service initially envisioned was a far more modest artistic presence—largely decorative and mostly confined to the El Portal visitor center. Once Vega was approached by the Friends of El Yunque Foundation to lead the project in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service, she immediately advocated for a more ambitious and meaningful integration. The result was an unprecedented program of site-specific commissions unfolding along the trail and embedded in the living fabric of the rainforest.

This did not come without resistance or challenge. Ecologists overseeing the site were initially skeptical and deeply concerned about the potential environmental impact of introducing artworks into such a fragile ecosystem. The early stages were marked by caution, confrontation and bureaucratic delay. “We had to earn their trust,” Vega recalled. Even after installation began, new challenges emerged. Working in the forest means working with nature—accepting its rhythms, reactions and unpredictability rather than attempting to control them. For this reason, ArteYUNQUE structures its calendar around hurricane season: the annual outdoor commissions are installed in October and remain on view until July.

The first edition launched in 2023, gathering eight artists’ works under the title “NATURA” with very minimal resources, primarily raised through grassroots fundraising efforts on the island. “It was extremely experimental,” Vega said. By the second edition, the project had secured more stable support, including a three-year grant from the Mellon Foundation and backing from Bloomberg Philanthropies. All works are now accompanied by QR codes offering additional information and contextual materials via Bloomberg Connects.

Since then, ArteYUNQUE has not only helped restore life and energy to the forest but also drawn Puerto Ricans back to reconnect with this sacred landscape. El Yunque is not only home to a unique ecosystem but also carries profound spiritual and historical significance: for the Indigenous Taíno, it was a sacred site—the dwelling place of their principal deity—and petroglyphs depicting Taíno figures and symbols can still be found today. This spiritual reverence was also grounded in ecological reality: El Yunque is the hydrological heart of northeastern Puerto Rico, supplying freshwater to hundreds of thousands of residents. Major rivers—including Espíritu Santo, Mameyes, Sabana, Pitahaya, Fajardo, Santiago, Río Blanco and Río Grande de Loíza—all originate in or are fed by the forest.

Held under the title “RÍO,” the third iteration of the annual exhibition, on view through July 18, centers on El Yunque’s historical role as a vital watershed, expanding outward to consider rivers and bodies of water as sources of life, channels of connection and vessels of memory. The eight commissioned works engage this theme in diverse materials, gestures and forms of encounter, responding to water as both an ecological system and a cultural archive.

Several works in “RÍO” directly evoke the ancestral Taíno and Afro-Caribbean traditions that revere the site and its waters as sacred sources of life, renewal and spiritual continuity. One of the most powerful interventions, located deep along the trail, is Daniel Lind-Ramos’s La Madre de Yúcahu (The Mother of Yúcahu). Inspired by Taíno mythology, the sculpture—constructed from irrigation pipes—assumes a totemic presence, evoking Atabey, the goddess of water and fertility. Her son Yúcahu, the god of yuca and agriculture, was said by the Taínos to inhabit the mountain. Integrating natural and industrial materials, the sculpture channels the continuous flow of water and the cycles of exchange that sustain ecosystems. The pipes flow directly into the ground, where the sculpture is anchored, forming a potent symbolic image of nourishment, balance and ancestral memory—each flowing in the interplay between nature and human history. Despite his demanding schedule, particularly following his widely acclaimed exhibition at MoMA PS1, Lind-Ramos embraced the commission, recognizing its deep resonance with his origins and community. The sculpture faces toward Loíza, his home village and a vital center of Afro-Caribbean culture on the island.

Holding a similarly evocative presence, Edra Soto’s sculptural installation De Río a Río (From River to River) presents three suspended bodies composed of ceramic masks and silk ribbons. The work links river spirits and their relentless flow to experiences of migration, transformation and resilience within Puerto Rican history, weaving a poetic connection between water and movement across time and space. Drawing from her own migratory experience—living and working in Chicago—the masks reflect the processes of physical, emotional and cultural transformation, adopting different personalities to adapt to new surroundings. At the same time, inspired by African and Caribbean traditions and symbologies, the sculpture assumes a new totemic role, serving as a protector and an expression of identity.

Standing at the start of the trail, Gisela Colón’s monolithic, iridescent green sculpture Ríos de Oro y Polvo (Dust Rivers) rises as an imposing reminder of centuries of extraction and destruction while simultaneously acting as a luminous protective presence. Embodying the forest’s geological and spiritual memory, the work links the transatlantic journey of Saharan dust to colonial gold extraction and the violence inflicted upon rivers and Indigenous bodies. By weaving dust, water, mineral and memory into a single symbolic and physical entity, the sculpture—the only work by the internationally recognized artist currently on view in her homeland—asserts itself as an act of repair and a powerful emblem of healing, ancestral wisdom and resilience.

All artists participating in ArteYUNQUE are Puerto Rican, either based on the island or part of its diaspora. In this way, the program serves as a vital platform for the local art scene, offering one of the few opportunities for commissioned public artworks of this scale in Puerto Rico. Each artist receives a production budget and stipend while retaining ownership of their work. “This helps to empower and support the amazing art scene that we have. There are very few art commission programs on the island,” Vega said, underscoring how rare it is for artists to operate in such a prominent, site-specific public context.

At the same time, ArteYUNQUE is playing a key role in drawing local communities back to the forest. “The site is often perceived as being only for tourists, yet this project opens them up to the local community, giving people the chance to connect with and have real access to contemporary art.” Visitor numbers reflect this growing impact, and each edition is accompanied by a rich program of music, poetry and performances that has consistently exceeded expectations in terms of attendance. During the most recent edition, the site welcomed approximately 600,000 visitors. “It’s a significant number—especially considering that no museum in Puerto Rico reaches those figures,” Rivera Ayala noted, observing that tourists rarely come to the island for museums alone and that such levels of engagement—particularly among local audiences—are remarkable.

Perhaps most importantly, ArteYUNQUE operates as a living creative laboratory for ecological awareness, particularly for younger generations. Each edition demonstrates how human intervention can exist sustainably and respectfully within nature. “Our rule is leave no trace,” Vega said. Artists are required to leave no permanent mark and are encouraged to use materials with the lowest possible ecological impact.

Artists undertake multiple site visits before proposing a work, carefully selecting locations and studying how their interventions will unfold. “Once the artists submit their proposals, we move into a mitigation process with ecologists, anthropologists and historians to ensure that what we’re doing has little to no impact on the landscape. The site itself presents challenges, of course, but at the same time it pushes everyone—artists included—out of their comfort zones in a productive and meaningful way.”

One of the first interventions encountered along the trail offers a compelling example of this site-responsive approach. With Barroglifos de El Yunque (Barroglifos of El Yunque), Puerto Rican architect and artist Jaime Suárez reimagines Indigenous petroglyphs, translating them into delicate spiral ceramic forms that gently settle onto moss-covered ancient rocks. Rather than carving into stone—an extractive and irreversible gesture associated with the original petroglyphs—Suárez’s works appear as subtle bas-reliefs resting on nature’s surface. The medium itself is deeply rooted in place: clay references the forest’s clay-rich soil, historically used by Indigenous Taíno communities for ceramics and ritual objects. Yet the choice of white ceramics renders the forms particularly vulnerable, heightening their exposure to humidity, erosion and biological processes. The sculptures openly embrace transformation, allowing the environment to inscribe time, weather and decay onto their surfaces.

In fact, creating art in and for nature also means accepting vulnerability, degradation and change over time—processes shaped by weather, plant growth and interactions with non-human elements. Most installations are therefore conceived as inherently ephemeral, synchronized with natural cycles and designed to evolve in tandem with the living environment that surrounds them.

This embrace of natural forces as active agents is also central to Dhara Rivera’s La Lluvia, la Casa y el Río Invisible (The Rain, the House and the Invisible River). Inside a modular, provisional domestic structure—a human-made primordial shelter of iron, ceramic and copper—the installation features hanging clay containers connected by pipes and taps. When it rains, the sculpture is activated, transforming into a self-contained human-made ecosystem animated by nature. In this way, the work metaphorically evokes the journey of water from the mountains of El Yunque to its quiet arrival in domestic spaces—an often “invisible river” flowing into our bodies—bridging the natural and the domestic while prompting reflection on the fragility of water resources and the vital interdependence of human and natural systems.

Another example is Frances Rivera González’s El Río se Hace Cuerpo (The River Becomes Body), which features eight suspended sculptures made from coconut palm and cabuya fibers, each honoring one of El Yunque’s eight rivers. Within months of installation, their forms have already begun to change, shaped by humidity and the passage of time, evoking the gigantic morphing of the surrounding vegetation as they follow the seasons. At the same time, the works attest to the resilience of Indigenous techniques in contrast to contemporary industrial production. Rivera González belongs to a new generation of Puerto Rican artists committed to revitalizing traditional Caribbean methods—particularly weaving and textile practices—while seamlessly transitioning between art, design and visual culture.

Yet, as Vega notes, when it comes to conservation challenges, humans often pose the greatest threat. “When we have these first meetings, I always tell the artists to be conscious that they have nature and human nature,” she joked, acknowledging that fallen branches are part of the process. At the same time, damage caused by curious visitors remains an ongoing educational challenge. While the U.S. Forest Service does not provide direct funding, it supports ArteYUNQUE through maintenance, surveillance, site protection and coverage of potential litigation-related costs.

Looking ahead, a central concern is how to preserve—or extend—the life of what the project has generated, despite the ephemeral nature of the works. A publication devoted to the first editions is currently in the plans, but from the outset, documentation has been central to Vega’s vision. ArteYUNQUE’s media channels are filled with material tracing every phase of the commissions, from artists working in their studios to the processes of conception, production and installation in the forest.

A significant moment will come next year, when works from the inaugural edition will be recreated or represented in an exhibition at El Barrio in New York. “We wanted to do something for the diaspora and bring a broader awareness of this project,” Vega said.

Longer-term ambitions include expanding the program to artists from across the Caribbean and potentially establishing a residency, though both would require additional resources. In the meantime, ArteYUNQUE will launch a new curated video art exhibition on January 17, continuing its exploration of the site through new media—an area the team hopes to further develop, alongside efforts to support artists working in painting and other formats. Titled “Todas las aguas Están Conectadas” and staged inside the Ranger House—the oldest such structure in the entire U.S. Forest system—the exhibition will feature works by both local and international artists, including Dhara Rivera, Carolina Caycedo, Helen Ceballos, Sofía Gallisa Muriente and Emilia Beatriz. Together, their contributions offer a ritual, sensory and poetic multimedia journey that highlights the role of rivers, lagoons and seas as collective organisms and vital forces that move through us and sustain us, while inviting viewers to pause, listen and reconnect with these aqueous bodies and landscapes.

Walking the trail alongside Vega and her team as they recalled the episodes, challenges, successes and setbacks they’ve shared with the artists, it’s abundantly clear that ArteYUNQUE is driven first and foremost by deep conviction, care and passion—for humans as much as for nature—grounded in a profound belief that human creativity can still fulfill a generative and regenerative function, rather than a destructive one, in relation to the natural world.

In this sense, ArteYUNQUE stands as a pioneering model for how art and ecological consciousness can converge—not as a symbolic gesture, but as a living, adaptive creative platform that embeds sustainability into its very structure and practice. It prompts both reflection and action toward recognizing, respecting and protecting the interdependence of ecosystems, communities and Puerto Rico’s vital natural resources. With ArteYUNQUE, contemporary art, Indigenous memory, ancestral knowledge and environmental care converge—using art as a tool to reimagine and “re-engineer” how human creativity can operate in symbiosis with nature rather than against it.