Independent curator Risa Puleo is the Artistic Director and Chief Curator of the 2028 Boston Public Art Triennial. Grounded in methods of abolition, sovereignty, and queer refusal, Puleo approaches curatorial practice as a social practice, using the exhibition space as a platform to build and mobilize community.
The New York Times and Artforum hailed her exhibition Walls Turned Sideways: Artists Confront the Justice System (Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, 2018) as a landmark, while Monarchs: Brown and Native Artists in the Path of the Butterfly (Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, 2018) was lauded for its poetry, for anticipating the contemporary art world’s interest in Native art, and for its on-the-ground research outside the art world’s coastal centers. Her curatorial practice has increasingly turned towards implementing changes in the material, infrastructural, and social fabric of a place.
In 2023, Puleo was part of a team of curators for the 2023 Counterpublic Triennial in St. Louis, where she collaborated with Counterpublic’s director, James McAnnaly, and the Native film collaborative, New Red Order, to support the rematriation of this sacred site. Her exhibitions have been presented at arts organizations and museums across the country, including the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, Blue Star Contemporary, the Southwest School of Art, and the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; Artpace, San Antonio, and the Leslie‑Lohman Museum of Art in New York City. Her writing has appeared in Art in America, Art Papers, Art21, Asia Art Pacific, Hyperallergic, and Modern Painters. She is based in Chicago.
