A collective art exhibition celebrating Puerto Rican music icon Bad Bunny opened on Thursday at i AM art Gallery in San Juan, featuring works from 32 artists across multiple visual disciplines.
The show, titled Benito 100 x 35, launched two days before the musician performs in Puerto Rico to close his international tour. Tickets for the homecoming concerts sold out within hours.
Ángel Mathieu, the founder of i AM art Gallery and curator of the exhibition, organized the tribute after attending one of the singer's concerts at the Coliseo de Puerto Rico venue last summer. He said the performance fascinated him and inspired him to honor the global reggaeton star.
Mathieu said Benito represents a star and a beacon of hope for unity among people. Speaking with visible emotion, he added that he felt he and others were doing very little compared to what Bad Bunny had given to Puerto Rico, and expressed great satisfaction at seeing the finished exhibition.
Bad Bunny, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, is one of the most streamed urban music artists in the world. The host venue, i AM art Gallery, is situated in San Juan, the capital of the U.S. Caribbean territory.
Exhibition pieces and artistic homage
The collection features paintings, sculptures, holograms, and wooden chairs displaying the singer's image alongside symbols of Puerto Rican culture. Artist Omar Ortiz carved life-size wooden replicas of the chairs featured on the cover of Bad Bunny's album Debí tirar más fotos.
Visitors entering the gallery hall encounter an introductory text written by Jacobo Morales, a veteran Puerto Rican actor and director who starred in the short film Debí tirar más fotos.
In his statement, Morales wrote that simplicity and transcendence are compatible in writing, allowing imaginative work to reach the broadest possible audience. He stated that these principles align with Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, an urban genre singer and songwriter receiving global acclaim for promoting human dignity and connecting local identity with a universal vision.
Organizers positioned the text by Morales as an entryway to the main gallery, which documents the singer's artistic, cultural, and social impact through 32 individual perspectives.
Sculptures and cultural symbols
Participating artists span several generations and artistic mediums. Among them is Spanish painter and sculptor Luis Ivorra, who moved to the archipelago in 1978 and describes himself as a Puerto Rican born in Spain. Artwork by Ivorra was displayed at the gallery on Wednesday.
Ivorra created four ceramic rabbit sculptures painted with oxides and glazes fired at high temperatures. The rabbit figures hold plantains and crabs, referencing Bad Bunny's role as co-owner of the Cangrejeros de Santurce basketball team, a professional franchise based in San Juan.
Ivorra explained that the rabbit shape represents a costume, noting that the musician began his early career wearing a rabbit disguise. He said he chose to create the pieces because he had crossed paths with the singer at university while Benito was dressed in a rabbit costume.
Other works in the exhibition explore Puerto Rican wildlife and regional heritage. Artist Grisselle Soto contributed a triptych titled Siempre Fui Yo, depicting Benito over a sugarcane field in Vega Baja, the northern coastal town where the singer grew up. The painting includes depictions of actor Jacobo Morales and the Sapo Concho, an endangered toad species native to Puerto Rico.
Painter Anelisse Molini created a piece titled Por la mañana café, which uses a traditional coffee cup as a container of memory filled with symbols of Boricua identity.
Artist Marie Court presented an acrylic on canvas titled Don Benito: El jíbaro de hoy. The painting portrays Bad Bunny as a jíbaro, a traditional Puerto Rican term for mountain farmers who serve as an enduring symbol of island identity and self-reliance.
