Borinquen Gallo
30 May – 26 Jun. 2026
Borinquen Gallo is an Italian-Puerto Rican multi-disciplinary artist whose work delves into themes of material personal and social transformation, community development, reimagined socio-cultural systems and structures, through sculpture and installations made using a range of repurposed materials. Her work is developed both individually and collaboratively through participatory initiatives including public schools, museums, community and cultural organizations.
Everyday detritus, construction, and packaging materials including trash bags, debris netting, and caution tape, are painstakingly manually knitted, threaded and reconfigured into lush textural weavings. Across a broad range of considerations — material, formal, psychologically intimate and social — the work aims to modulate between the familiar and the surprising so as to fundamentally disrupt viewers’ assumptions regarding what is valuable and discardable.
Gallo received her BFA in Painting and Sculpture from the Cooper Union for The Advancement of Science and Art, her MFA in Painting from Hunter College. She has received numerous awards including the Sol Shaviro Award, The Marion Netter Fellowship, the Doris Leibowitz Art Educator Award. Residencies include the Materials For the Artist in Residence Program, The Children Museum of Manhattan, The Bronx Museum of the Arts AIM Program, the Vermont Studio Center and The Cooper Union Artist Residency. Gallo has exhibited at Alessandro Berni Gallery, Malin Gallery, BRIC Arts Media, Smack Mellon, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Wave Hill Sunroom Project Space, The Hudson River Museum, The National Academy Museum, and the Queens Museum. She participated in numerous art fairs including Art Miami, Clio Art Fair, Scope, and Volta. She is currently Adjunct Professor of Art and Design Education at Pratt Institute in New York.
Pratt Institute
A top-ranked college with opportunities in art, design, architecture, liberal arts and sciences, and information studies, Pratt offers nearly 50 undergraduate and graduate degree programs and serves 5,140 students. The Institute’s impact expands beyond its 25-acre residential campus in Brooklyn to cutting-edge facilities throughout the borough, a landmark building and public gallery in Manhattan, as well as an extension campus, PrattMWP College of Art and Design in Utica, New York. Since its founding in 1887, Pratt has prioritized diversity and inclusion, welcoming students from all walks of life while developing and sustaining pathways to more equitable workplaces and careers.