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Beatriz Santiago Muñoz (born 1972) is an artist based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Her work combines aspects of ethnography and theater to create film and video projects that '''combine the styles of documentary, cinéma vérité, and utopian fiction. She has touched on subjects including nature, indigeneity, Caribbean politics, communities, colonization, the relationship between artwork and labor, and post-capitalist'''-militarized land. Her work has been exhibited at the Tate Modern, the Whitney Biennial 2017, Galería Kurimanzutto, and the Guggenheim Museum. She co-founded Beta-Local (an art organization and experimental education program in San Juan, Puerto Rico) with artist/educator José Cruz and curator Michelle Marxuach in 2009. In 2013, she began organizing Walking Seminars through Puerto Rico to teach artists, filmmakers, and activists how to deepen their perception of sensorial and poetic aspects of lived realities.

Career
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz received an undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago in 1993 and an MFA in Film and Video from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1997. She has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions during the past 15 years.

Santiago Muñoz's first solo exhibition, The Black Cave, was presented in London in 2013. The exhibition featured two video projects, La Cueva Negra and Farmacopea, that explore how the Puerto Rican landscape has been influenced by the development of new infrastructure and tourism projects. La Cueva Negra focuses on the Paso del Indio, an indigenous burial site in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico. The site was accidentally uncovered during the construction of a highway twenty years ago. This video presents a dynamic history of the site through interviews with laborers, archeologists, and members of the surrounding community. Farmacopea sheds light on how the tourism industry has transformed and de-historicized the landscape of Puerto Rico. The film focuses on certain native toxic plant species, and the government's efforts to eradicate them. By focusing on the government's desire to render the landscape harmless in order to depict Puerto Rico as an idyllic and de-politicized Caribbean paradise, the film draws attention to how tourism is destroying the native environment and indigenous culture.

Ojos Para Mis Enemigos, a video piece created by Santiago Muñoz in 2014, explores the displacement of families during the construction of the construction of the (former) Roosevelt Roads Naval Station in Ceiba, Puerto Rico. During filming, Santiago Muñoz collaborated with Pedro Ortiz, a Ceiba resident whose family was displaced. The video follows several Ceiba residents, including Ortiz, and examines the lasting effects of military construction on the ability of residents to access land.

'''Muñoz incorporates the idea of "gaze" throughout much of her work. Her 2014 work Otros Usos uses a series of mirrors to create a kaleidoscope effect.'''

Select works

 * La Cueva Negra (2013), digital video
 * Farmacopea (2013), 16mm film
 * Ojos Para Mis Enemigos (2014), digital video
 * Other Uses (2014), short film
 * Marché Salomon (2015), film

Solo exhibitions

 * The Black Cave (2013), Gasworks Gallery, in collaboration with the Tate Modern, London. The Black Cave (La Cueva Negra, 2013) draws on interviews with archaeologists and local residents, and explores the Paso del Indio, an indigenous burial ground in Puerto Rico that was discovered during the construction of a highway and eventually paved over.
 * Beatriz Santiago Muñoz: A Universe of Fragile Mirrors (2016), Pérez Art Museum Miami, Miami, FL. This exhibition included a new work, Marché Salomon (2015), an alternative story about a popular Haitian market, a toxic tropical flower, or a newly discovered archeological site in Puerto Rico. The actors are ordinary people encouraged by the artist to use strategies from performance art and reenactment. The exhibition was organized by Pérez Art Museum Miami Assistant Curator, María Elena Ortiz. The accompanying exhibition catalogue Beatriz Santiago Muñoz: A Universe of Fragile Mirrors was published by PAMM on 2016.
 * A Universe of Fragile Mirrors (2017), El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY. This is the third exhibition of El Museo’s five-year series highlighting Latina artists. The exhibition consisted of continuous play film of non-linear narratives that push the established differences between documentary and fiction story-telling.
 * Song, Strategy, Sign (2016), New Museum, NY, NY. A series of 16mm portraits of anthropologists, activists, and artists working in Haiti and Puerto Rico capturing the aspirations and imagined futures of those who are deeply invested in alternative models of being, and using them as allegories for larger political possibilities in the region. The film work was displayed as a three-channel video inspired by Monique Wittig’s 1969 novel, Les Guérillères. The video was a work in progress that Muñoz developed during a residency at the museum.

Group exhibitions

 * Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today (2014), Guggenheim Museum, New York. This exhibition was curated by Pablo León de la Barra with a variety of arts and mediums relating to the social, political, and economic histories, inequalities, and progress in Latin America.
 * Whitney Biennial (2017), New York, NY. This is the 78th survey of American contemporary art in the museum’s ongoing series of annuals and biennials.
 * Condo New York (2017), New York, NY. Condo New York is a collaborative exhibition by 36 galleries across 16 New York spaces. Santiago Muñoz video work was featured in the group exhibition (with artists Yann Gerstberger and Ramiro Chaves) at the CHAPTER NY gallery with Galeria Agustina Ferreyra from San Juan, P.R.
 * Ecology After Nature: Video & Film for War Machines and Environmental Memories (2020), online series convened by Lukas Brasiskis. Muñoz's short film Other Uses (2014) was included (with films by Jorge Jácome’s Flores, Sasha Litvintseva, Daniel Mann, and Emilija Škarnulytė) in this virtual exhibition about the affect war has on the natural environment.
 * PÒTOPRENS: The Urban Artists of Port-au-Prince (2018), Pioneer Works Gallery, Brooklyn, New York. Muñoz's film Marché Salomon (2015) follows two meat vendors in a market in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and was presented in the Pioner Works Gallery's essay and film exhibition PÒTOPRENS: The Urban Artists of Port-au-Prince.

Awards

 * Herb Alpert Award in the Arts (2019)
 * Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (2017)
 * Creative Capital Visual Arts Award (2015)
 * Center for Art, Research and Alliances (CARA) Fellowship (2023)