Darice Polo is a multi-disciplinary artist. Her drawings, paintings, prints and digital film explore the intersection of personal and collective history. These works have been exhibited singularly, and in dialogue with one another in a range of national and international venues.
Her short film Nature Boy was recently screened in New York at the International Puerto Rican Heritage Film Festival, the Film Diary Festival, the Bronx Screening Series and at the LIFE Film Festival in Los Angeles. Other films have been shown at A.I.R Gallery in New York and internationally at the SEA Foundation in The Netherlands and at the Creative Time Summit in Warsaw, Poland.
She is currently producing Brújula, a full-length independent film that explores her grandparents emigration from Puerto Rico to New York in 1927. Through her personal history it addresses the plight of Puerto Rico, and how U.S. colonization has undermined the sovereignty of its people and culture. It also tackles topical concerns and conveys the resolve of a nation to overcome adversity.
Intervenxions and The Latinx Project at New York University published her essay Seeds of Colonialism: Ohio Forces in Puerto Rico on July 25, 2022, the anniversary of the United States invasion of Puerto Rico.
She participated in the Equal Justice artist residency at the Santa Fe Art Institute in New Mexico in 2018, exhibiting and working alongside a breadth of international artists engaged in social practice.
Born in New York City, she received a BFA in Media Arts from the School of Visual Arts and an MFA in painting from SUNY, Albany. At present, she lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio and have been an Associate Professor in the School of Art at Kent State University since 2004.