Yiyo Tirado-Rivera is a multidisciplinary artist with a BA in Design and Graphic Arts from the School of Visual Arts and Design (EAPD) in San Juan, Puerto Rico. 

His creative processes explore the deconstruction of different aesthetic regimes associated with four fundamental axes: architecture, construction, the visitor economy and the designation of his Caribbean landscape as a paradisiacal image. Focused on investigations about Puerto Rico’s territorial status, public space and the socio-political geography that defines them, his works exhibit a critical perspective on the colonial history of his island. Tirado-Rivera’s practice analyzes the models that promote a social, political, and aesthetic molding of the public landscape at the behest of the industrial, economic and architectural infrastructure designed to serve the tourism industry. His sculptures, photographs, and paintings subvert the codes of representation of the constructed image of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, and reflect on the hegemonic cultural forms by which a colonialist and fetishized vision of the island was implemented.  His works critically reflect the tourism industry’s deliberate economic, aesthetic and cultural model of colonialism. 

Tirado-Rivera has exhibited in numerous institutional spaces in: Mexico, United Arab Emirates, Argentina, Peru, Chile, United States, Spain, Egypt and the Dominican Republic. Most recently his work was included in Guest Relations exhibition curated by Murtaza Vali presented at the Jameel Arts Centre in Dubai and in  the critically acclaimed exhibit No existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane María (2022-2023), curated by Marcela Guerrero and presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, and Tropical is Political curated by Marina Reyes Franco and presented at the Americas Society in New York and at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico (MAC-PR).