Cruz not only pushes the limits of his artistic media, but also the ways artists can represent psychological spaces related to
migration. Cruz's work represents the life of those migrating families that either left their homeland, stayed, or went back and are divided between two places. In his practice, he fuses video, fashion, performance, and painting to explore and redefine
queerness,
diasporic, psychological, and ever-shifting unnamed spaces. His paintings have been exhibited at
El Museo del Barrio, the
Bronx Museum of the Arts,
Jersey City Museum,
Museo de Puerto Rico, and various galleries. He has also shown at
Lehmann Maupin, the
Islip Art Museum,
Momenta Art, and Performa 13. He was the 2015 Resident at
Gateway Project Spaces. His films have been shown at the Big Screen Project, the
Anthology Film Archives,
Arte Americas, El Museo del Barrio, and various installations in Philadelphia,
Chapel Hill,
Los Angeles, and
Miami. Cruz was commissioned by El Museo del Barrio with support from the
Franklin Furnace Fund to create
The Opera. The project was presented as part of Performa 13, and it involved thirty performers, including ten actors, an
opera singer, a
jazz singer, and a small
orchestra. The artists
Elia Alba and
Mickalene Thomas were also part of the performance. The work, like the artist, has an emotional intensity. Cruz has said, "I am a bit of a drama queen and I'm not apologizing for it." Sasha Dees, reviewing for
ARC Magazine, said, "It's a lot to take in, at times confusing at first glance. Broken plates, hidden images behind thick dripping chocolate and white paint, fragile paper planes, chairs, period piece costumes, and splinters of glass in sparkling red high heel shoes are paired with screams, opera singing, and hysterical laughter. A second commission by the
Bronx Council on the Arts to re-stage the performance,
The Piano Piece (originally performed in 2008 at the
Governor's School for the Arts in
Norfolk, Virginia), for the Longwood Art Gallery followed up this project in 2014. Later that year, his paintings were included in a year-long exhibition, Portraiture Now: Staging The Self, at the
Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in
Washington D.C. Cruz "use[s] painting, video, sculpture, and costume-making to map out a queer, diasporic experience", usually a narrative "that has been suppressed" when discussing "Puerto Rican migration". He wrote, "Through a variety of new and found materials, such as enamel,
gold-leaf,
china, constructed costumes and rags, I layer my paintings and build up their surfaces in an attempt to make visible the queer body, to dress it, and depict the space where it exists. Whether I layer sound over sound or cover a painted figure in chocolate paint, I use seduction to prompt the viewer to question and negotiate what is being offered while partially obscuring the familiar." The artist cites "the fantasy world of
Dorothy's
Oz and the politics of
Maria's
West Side Story" stating that "personal narratives, American and queer history events, classic films, and fashion" anchor his work. In addition, he also "reinterpret[s] invisible histories" those of "a migrating people and the queer body". His work has been reviewed many times in
The New York Times,
Time Out New York,
The Wall Street Journal,
Journal USA,
The Studio,
ARC Magazine,
BOMB, and
Centro Journal. == Exhibitions and awards ==