Amarise Deán Santo

Amarise Deán Santo is a photo based artist and builder. He utilizes photography to observe andallow the land to become tangible. The results are images that harness history, ancestry, altars and still lifes that are alive. The intuitive aspect is referential directly to a gentle and deeply personal connection to passed down knowledge of their elders from the island, Puerto Rico. Each object breathes together. Upon inspection and study, each detail narrates a space that invites the body; trans, queer, and diasporic, to enter. These images document survival while serving as a means to build new worlds the body can be fully liberated in. Piecing together life cycles that directly come from the land their family derives from, becomes a simultaneous practice of honoring their 2spirit body which has existed and will for futures to come. 

Deán received their BFA in Photography and Film from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2018. They are based in Flushing, Queens, New York and Richmond, Virginia. They have been published in The New Yorker, Aperture Magazine, Nueva Luz, and has shown at El Museo del Barrio, The Museum of New York, and The Center.