This article examines how race is represented in public art‐works sponsored by the State in contemporary Puerto Rico. We focus mainly on two sculptures that commemorate Puerto Rico's black heritage, the sculptural triad entitled “Ritmo” (2006), and the sculpture titled “Osaín” (2007), both located in the town of Caguas. We argue that blackness in Puerto Rican art‐works is rendered passive, foreign, and primitive. Nevertheless, while creating folkloric representations of blacks, black artists also try to convey a different image of blackness: one that is marked by modernity and rebelliousness.

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The term Afropolitan—evoking the image of mobility, cultural production, and consumerism in Africa and the African diaspora—has enjoyed some salience in popular culture. However, much of the scholarly debate has focused on the elitism associated with the concept. Linked initially to short reflective pieces by Taiye Selasi in 2005 and Achille Mbembe in 2007, Afropolitanism has rarely been analyzed in historical contexts. The contributors engage the concept of the Afropolitan across a broad time and space that spans the fourteenth to twenty-first centuries and locates the Afropolitan in Africa, the Americas, Europe, and Asia. This introduction analyzes their written and photographic essays along three themes: visual culture, narrativity, and intersectionality, recognizing that their work also pushes against and expands on these frameworks. By engaging with the Afropolitan as a historical phenomenon, the issue highlights new methods and theories for analyzing global diasporas—past, present, and future.

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