Currently Showing:
Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico, Restrictions Apply*
– A Photo Essay by Jo Cosme
04/26 – 10/26
About the Exhibition:
Battle for Paradise is a photographic series by Jo Cosme that examines the tension between Puerto Rico as a marketed paradise and Puerto Rico as a lived reality. Part of the ongoing project Welcome to Paradise: ¡Viva Puerto Rico Libre!, the work focuses on how tourism, settler colonialism, and disaster-driven policies reshape who can remain on the archipelago and under what conditions.
Through photography, Cosme highlights the contrast between images designed to attract and the realities often kept out of frame—restricted access to land and beaches to the native population, rising costs of living, and the displacement of local communities. The phrase “restrictions apply” points to the fine print behind the promise of paradise, where access is uneven and shaped by power.
Rather than presenting Puerto Rico as a distant place, the work asks viewers to consider their proximity to these systems and what it means to move through them, whether as tourists, settlers, investors, or witnesses.
About the Artist:
Jo Cosme is a Boricua multimedia artist originally from Borikén, Puerto Rico, now based in Seattle after being displaced by Hurricane María. Working across photography and interactive installations, her practice examines memory, colonial power, and the gap between Puerto Rico’s tourist image and the lived realities of its People under more than 500 years of colonial subjugation. She is currently developing Welcome to Paradise: ¡Viva Puerto Rico Libre!, an evolving body of work that critiques the constructed idea of paradise and the disaster-driven gentrification reshaping the archipelago.
Cosme holds a BFA in Photography from the School of Fine Arts of Puerto Rico. Her work has been exhibited at Museo de las Américas (PR), Whatcom Museum, Photographic Center Northwest, Dab Art Gallery (Los Angeles), and Galerie Rivoli 59 (Paris). Her awards include the MASS MoCA Puerto Rican Artist Fellowship, Northwest Film Forum’s Collective Power Fund Grant, Artist Trust’s GAP Grant, Pratt Fine Arts Center’s Bernie Funk Scholarship, McMillen Foundation Fellowship, and 4Culture’s Arc Fellowship. In 2025, she presented new work at Gallery 110 and ARTS at King Street Station.
Exhibit With Us/Call for Art
Kerry Hall offers an intimate setting where art can be encountered naturally—during gatherings, conversations, and everyday moments. Our new exhibition space is part of an effort to highlight local artists whose work speak to community, identity, place, and shared experience. We are especially interested in work that invites reflection or conversation and feels at home in a civic, people-centered space.
This interest form helps us get to know you and your work as we curate rotating displays for Kerry Hall. Submitting this form does not guarantee selection, but it allows us to consider your work for current and future installations.
Questions?
Please contact us at stgece@stgpresents.org.