Biography
Tatyana Nieves Brown is an Afro-Puerto Rican and African American artist, designer, cultural producer, and visual anthropologist based between London and Bayamón, Puerto Rico.
Her practice explores how everyday materials might tell overlooked stories of colonialism in islands that remain occupied or in limbos of contested sovereignty. From airport inspection stickers in Puerto Rico to sports jerseys in Taiwan, she examines what these objects carry: memories, refusals, unresolved feelings about the future. Through installation art, object design, artistic research, and cultural programming, she reimagines these objects as sites of political possibility and global solidarity—thinking of the world as an archipelago.
While on a Service Year with the Rhodes Trust, she is launching Estorbo Público Studio: a creative studio inviting the Global Majority into Puerto Rico’s quest for material futures beyond its often unknown U.S. Territory status through speculative design objects and installation art. www.estorbopublicostudio.com.
She has contributed to exhibitions and public programs at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Sharjah Art Foundation, and Alserkal Avenue. She holds an MSc in Visual, Material, and Museum Anthropology from University of Oxford, and a B.A. in Social Research and Public Policy from NYU Abu Dhabi. She is a Rhodes, Truman and Luce Scholar (Taiwan).