Javier Cambre -born Xavier Cambre in San Juan, Puerto Rico, son of a Spanish father and a Puerto Rican mother of Spanish and French descent- is a contemporary artist working in diverse media such as photography, as well as having explored video, collage, text and sculpture. He is the grandson of the poet Evaristo Ribera Chevremont.
After earning an Associate Degree in Science and Mathematics, Cambre studied architecture at Universidad de Puerto Rico (B. Design) and at Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana (Dipl. Arquitecto) in Colombia. In 1998 Cambre graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a Master of Fine Arts. Javier Cambre is a tenured professor in the Art and Photography department at Queensborough Community College, City University of New York, where he has taught since the year 2000.
With an eye for the unusual and under the spell of an existential absurdity, whether in his studio work or in his images of New York or around the world, there is a playful and uncanny edge to Cambre’s photographs that brings to mind the surrealist artists of the 1920s.
Cambre has exhibited his work at the 2002 Whitney Biennial, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, the Brooklyn Museum, the Sculpture Center, the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, El Museo del Barrio and the Moore Space in Miami. He has also exhibited his work in museums in Spain, Puerto Rico, Russia and Argentina. Cambre has been awarded residencies at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, CA, and at the National Studio Program in P.S. 1/MoMA, as well as artist grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture, the New Jersey Council on the Arts and the Research Foundation of the City University of New York. His work is in the collection of the Whitney Museum.