A New York City-based Puerto Rican visual and performance artist, Desi Santiago’s artistic practice spans from 1990 to the present and is heavily influenced by subcultural scenes, with a strong foundation in NYC nightlife, and cross-over into fashion and art worlds. Santiago’s work draws from, addresses, and utilizes the respective vocabularies and iconography of these worlds to create ceremonial experiences and relational performances, which deal with identity, exchange, and the duality of mourning/celebration. His practice is that of ‘the host’, wherein the body is the channel and receptor for circumstance, experience, and identities to pass through resulting in a visual vocabulary of object, installation, and performance.

Santiago’s large-scale installations often involve performative and theatrical platforms, richly layered with philosophical, historical and social references. Santiago received a MFA from Bard College. The artist’s work has exhibited at Matthew Marks Gallery, D’Amelio Terras Gallery, Deitch Projects, MoMA PS1, Asia Song Society, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museé des Arts Decoratifs, Paris. Santiago was recently profiled in the Style section of The New York Times.