Darice Polo is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work explores Puerto Rican culture and history on the island and in the diaspora. Her maternal grandparents emigrated to New York from Puerto Rico in 1927 and settled at the intersection of Prospect and Longwood Avenues in the Bronx. Her grandfather was a member of the Association of Puerto Rican Writers and Journalists and supported many, who subsequently settled in this large Hispanic enclave, as a paralegal. His activism has inspired her to weave together, in her work, the history of the Puerto Rican people and diaspora, to celebrate the warmth and beauty of Puerto Rican culture, and to galvanize change by informing global communities of the ongoing challenges faced by the Puerto Rican people as a consequence of their colonial status.
Her films have been screened in the International Puerto Rican Heritage Film Festival at the Museum of the City of New York, the Bronx Screening Series supported by the Bronx Council of the Arts, the Film Diary Festival at the Millennium Film Workshop in Brooklyn, the 14th A.I.R Biennial at A.I.R Gallery and at the LIFE Film Festival in Los Angeles.
Harrod Suarez, a professor of Comparative American Studies at Oberlin College, speaks in length about Polo’s work in their article Midterm Evaluation, Swing State Aesthetics, published in the March 2020 issue of American Quarterly. Polo is the recipient of a Cuyahoga Arts & Culture grant in support of a community-based project in Cleveland and a Puffin Foundation Grant in support of her film work. Her work can be found in the Progressive Art Collection, the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art and the Hahn, Loeser & Parks Collection.
Her essay Seeds of Colonialism: Ohio Forces in Puerto Rico was published in Intervenxions, a Latinx Project NYU publication, on the 124th anniversary of the United States’ invasion of Puerto Rico. Born in New York, NY, Polo holds an MFA degree from SUNY, Albany and a BFA degree from the School of Visual Arts. She is the coordinator of the drawing program in the School of Art at Kent State University, where she has been a professor since 2004. She currently lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio.