Brenda Amaryllis Cruz Díaz was born on January 14, 1974, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. She is a multidisciplinary artist, historian and researcher based in Madrid, Spain since 1997. Cruz began her university education at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus where in 1996 she obtained a Bachelor of Arts with a concentration in Plastic Arts. and specialization in painting, engraving and art history. She moved to Madrid to continue his studies in the Doctoral Program in Painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Complutense University of Madrid where in 2016 she obtained his doctoral degree with an Outstanding Cum laude rating with the thesis The chameleon art of Marcos Irizarry: between Spanish informalism and American abstraction. 1950-1970. In 2003, she obtained the DEA (Diploma of Advanced Studies) from the same faculty. From 1998-2001 she approved 24 credits in doctoral courses in Painting, in the Program: Plastic, technique and concepts of the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Complutense University of Madrid.
As an artist, researcher, and academic, she has participated in various cultural initiatives in Puerto Rico and Spain. She has offered talks, conferences and interviews at different universities, museums, congresses, radio stations and artistic centers. Among which are the communication entitled Portrait of a (de)colonized: a photographic album of my multicultural identity, within the framework of the II International Congress on Art and Identity Politics Visualizations and narratives of memory: urban space, nature, migrations, technology and gender, at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Murcia, in 2019, and was interviewed by Norma Valle on Radio Universidad’s Agenda de Hoy program, on the occasion of the Portrait of a (de)colonized woman.
In her artistic production, Cruz explores identity issues, from individual, social, cultural or gender identity, as well as the construction of colonial discourses and their power relations, using her review of historical and bibliographical sources, as well as her own life experience as a Puerto Rican in exile. She has had individual exhibitions and has participated in countless group shows, in institutions and museums in Puerto Rico, as well as in Spain, Philadelphia, New York City, Macedonia, Morocco, Poland, Egypt, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Malaysia and Mexico, such as the Museum of Art Dr. Pío López Martínez, University of Puerto Rico at Cayey, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Puerto Rico, the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture, Central Art Gallery, Malaysia, Espacio Tres50, Chiapa de Corzo, Mexico, the Malaquita Workshop, the Museum of History, Anthropology and Art. University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus, the Caguas Museum of Art, Puerto Rico, the Alexandria Library, Egypt, the San Juan Museum of Art and History, Puerto Rico, the Puerto Rican Athenaeum, Hunter East Harlem Gallery en Hunter College, The City University of New York, Taller Puertorriqueño, Philadelphia, Museo Casa Escuté, Carolina, Puerto Rico, The National Chalcography from Madrid. Some of his notable exhibitions are: her 2005 solo exhibition I am: a tattooed body at Casa de América, Madrid, Spain; her most recent solo exhibition in 2019, Retrato de una (de) colonizada, at El Bastión, Old San Juan; The San Juan Triennial: Latin America and the Caribbean, El Panal/The Hive, with the project by Hatuey Ramos Post(al) Colonial Correspondence of 2012 in collaboration with Oscar Mestey and Brenda Cruz; as well as, in 1998, her participation in the XII San Juan Biennial of Latin American and Caribbean Engraving. In the next year, in 2024, she will participate in the 3rd Black Brazil Biennial Art, São Paulo, Brazil.
