Artist Biography
Originally from San Sebastián, Puerto Rico, André is a public servant and an emerging photographer. His work navigates the intersections of identity and place, reframing the unnoticed with a fresh perspective. As a Puerto Rican-Chinese creative, he draws on the duality of his heritage, balancing past and present, personal narratives and collective histories, and the environments that shape them.
Torre Yokahú, 2018
Túnel Guajataca, 2025
Playa Crashboat, 2017
Cementerio Santa María Magdalena de Pazzis, 2018
Cueva La Ventana, 2014
Artist Statement
In the series Portales de la Memoria (“Portals of Memory”), I use framing, both natural and architectural portals, as a metaphor for moving between time, place, and lived experience. Each image becomes a threshold, inviting the viewer not only to look at a landscape, but to pass through it, entering the layered histories that quietly inhabit it.
More than simple depictions of place, these photographs function as acts of memory and reflection. Each site, Torre Yokahú in El Yunque Rainforest, Túnel Guajataca in Quebradillas, Playa Crash Boat in Aguadilla, Cementerio Santa María Magdalena de Pazzis in Old San Juan, and Cueva La Ventana in Arecibo, holds its own rhythm, presence, and emotional imprint. Together, they form a visual journey across Puerto Rico, where nature, architecture, and history converge.
These images become more than destinations to me; they are living portals to identity. They carry the traces of those who have passed through them, those who remember them, and those who continue to inhabit them. The series reveals Puerto Rico as a landscape of memory itself, where every frame is an opening into history, belonging, and the enduring connection between people and place.
