Jo Cosme is a Boricua Caribbean Antillean (Native Puerto Rican) multidisciplinary artist using photos, digital art, and installations to provoke reflections by contrasting the widespread perceptions of Puerto Rico as a Caribbean Paradise with the capitalist and neocolonialist realities endured by Native Boricuas over generations.

Cosme finished her BFA majoring in photography at the School of Fine Arts, Puerto Rico. Her works have been exhibited and received awards in places such as Museum of the Americas (PR), Upstream Gallery (NY), Photographic Center Northwest (WA), and Galerie Rivoli 59 (Paris) to name a few.

In 2017, during the 6-month long blackout caused by Hurricane María, she created a tarot deck that chronologically depicts the events after the storm’s landfall accompanied by a bilingual educational book. The success of this piece granted her awards in juried art shows, as well as interviews with magazines such as Hyperallergic. Cosme has given talks in places such as Allied Media Conferences (MI) and MIT Game Lab (MA)among others. Due to the hardships of life after the hurricane, she was displaced to Seattle in 2018 where she would continue pursuing her art career.

In 2022, she was awarded the Puerto Rico Fellowship at the Asset for Artists Residency in Mass MoCA, where she started her new immersive installation: Welcome to Paradise. Once back in Seattle, she was awarded the new project grant from Northwest Film Forum’s Collective Power Fund and the Artist’s Trust’s GAP grant to help launch this new project.