Shey Rivera was born and raised on the archipelago of Borikén and has been living in Providence, RI -land of the Narraganset and Wampanoag peoples- for over a decade.

Rivera has an MA in Global Arts and Cultures, as Presidential Fellow at Rhode Island School of Design. They also count on a BA in Psychology and Sociology from the University of Puerto Rico (UPR-Rio Piedras), and graduate studies in Contemporary Media and Culture from the University of the Sacred Heart, San Juan, Puerto Rico. But most importantly, Rivera counts on years of on-the-ground experience as a practitioner in the arts sector, alongside long term and trusted relationships with communities of artists and culture bearers across geographies.

Past leadership roles in the arts sector include: Co-Director and Artistic Director of AS220, a renowned arts organization and creative incubator in Providence, RI, and successor to AS220’s founder Umberto Crenca. After 8 years at AS220, Rivera took on the role of Director of Inclusive Regional Development at MIT CoLab, in the Dept of Urban Studies and Planning of MIT, where they co-designed and implemented workshops on collective leadership and community innovation in Colombia.

For more info, visit SheyRivera.com

“I use multiple artistic mediums to create a mejunje (mix) where magical realism and science fiction become doors to decolonial futures. My creative practice is a tool to confront colonization and it gains strength from my lived experience and history of the island of Borikén (Puerto Rico), where I was born and raised. My creative practice has become my ancestral superpower, a way of merging past-present-future to uncover wisdom harnessed across time. It’s my way of challenging colonialism and creating spaces and stories of queer joy, liberation, imagination, and self-determination in the face of U.S. imperialism.”