Christopher López (b.1984), a Puerto Rican Lens-Based Artist, Educator, and Public Historian was born in The Bronx and was raised between New York and New Jersey. He has been working as a visual artist since 2005. To date, many of his works have been based on historical figures and events on the island of Puerto Rico. Often exploring diminishing histories, his projects celebrate both the richness of culture and the inherent complexities of identity and place as they are experienced in Puerto Rico and the diaspora. His work was most notably featured in the exhibition, “Caribbean; Crossroads of the World” which spanned three museums in New York City and showcased over a hundred years of Caribbean art from the region's most prominent artists.
As an Educator, Christopher has developed and piloted programs for the Aperture Foundation in New York City as well as developed curriculum and facilitated youth art intensives for The Center for Urban Pedagogy City Studies program at the International Community High School in The South Bronx.
Christopher has been awarded fellowships at The Laundromat Project and The Diaspora Solidarities Lab with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. He is a current member of Diversify Photo, an initiative started to diversify the photography industry and has lectured at Cornell University, Michigan State University, and Barnard College among others. His most recent publication, The Afterlives of Ismael Rivera was published in 2022 by Arca Press a subsidiary press of Michigan State University and has been collected by The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Library and Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver. His most recent body of work, The Fires, explores the history of gentrification and arson in the city of Hoboken, New Jersey. The work utilizes research, the appropriation of archives, portraiture, and oral history to create a new living archive of this history born from community experience and knowledge. The project has received awards from The New Jersey Council for the Humanities and the New Jersey Historical Commission. Christopher’s artworks are currently in the permanent collections of El Museo Del Barrio, The World Trade Center Memorial Museum, and The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.