Diasporican Queens: A Puerto Rican Street Party & Fashion Show,

About the event

Brooklyn, NY — A street will come alive with color, rhythm, and reclamation during Diasporican Queens, a multidisciplinary block party and fashion performance centering Puerto Rican identity, Indigeneity, and visual culture. Created and curated by Nuyorican-Dominican York artist and researcher Gabby Vazquez, the event will spotlight the unique intersection of pageantry, performance, and cultural survival—as well as elements of history centering Black and Latinx identity in Brooklyn. 

Born from Vazquez’s ethnographic work and personal experiences as a former Miss Boerum Hill titleholder, Diasporican Queens reimagines the pageant stage as a platform for expression and communal healing. The project raises critical questions about nationalism, erasure, and representation in U.S.-based pageant systems—using fashion, murals, music, and movement to celebrate diasporic identities and ancestral connection.

Why should you sponsor?

“As a Nuyorican from Boerum Hill, I’ve watched our flags and stories disappear,” Vazquez says. “This project is a call to gather, to remember, and to reassert presence. Fashion is just the beginning—it’s about our bodies, our memories, our streets.” You should sponsor this interdisciplinary event because it brings neighbors together for an intergenerational celebration of cultural heritage.

Gabrielle Vazquez

I have devoted seven years to the non-for-profit sector, supporting the arts and youth education, and have experience in politics, cultural research, and digital communications. My creative research holds a focus on indigenous politics, Latinx & Caribbean visual culture, cultural assertion centering the Nuyorican experience, and material culture & dress. Through my interdisciplinary practice, I continually expand upon my fashion-as-art approach to design with intentions of bridging gaps between creative mediums and anthropological research.

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