Imagining an Archipelago | Pacita Abad: Colby College Museum of Art

Connecting generations across oceans, Imagining an Archipelago: Art from Cuba, Guam, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Their Diasporas presents approximately fifty contemporary artworks by more than forty artists. The physically and visually immersive presentation brings together paintings, sculptures, videos, prints, photographs, and multimedia installations—including several newly commissioned, site-specific works—that explore artists’ relationships to the histories and communities of their lands and seas. Uniting the works are themes of cultural and political self-determination, indigeneity and migration, and climate crisis and resilience.

The exhibition is organized geographically, showcasing each island’s uniqueness, and thematically—Land, Sea and Sky; Religion and Spirituality; Food; and Military Occupations—offering visitors multiple ways to engage with ideas of history, culture, and identity. At its heart, Imagining an Archipelago provides a platform for solidarity and connection among artists and island communities, both at home and in diaspora, in poignant, healing, and joyful ways.

Through painting, photography, installation, sculpture, weaving, assemblage, and film, the artists convey the layered realities of life shaped by US expansion. Together, the artworks form a vivid archipelago of stories that underscore the enduring impact of these histories on contemporary American life and invite visitors to reconsider how we carry the past—and what it means to be American.

The exhibition’s historical focus begins in the late nineteenth century, a period when movements toward independence gained momentum across Cuba, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico and the 1898 Treaty of Paris shifted control from Spain to the United States.