Valdés's work in ceramics, printmaking, video, and installation explores the colonial and imperial economies that tie the transoceanic movement of people and political ideologies across Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas.
[4] Valdés works with a wide range of source material that reflects the impact of global networks of exchange on contemporary issues of transcultural identity, displacement and migration, and the climate crisis.
[7] Her work is, in part, informed by this early experience of migration, her childhood memories of Cuba, and adjusting to life in the United States.
[26] Valdés's work is also the subject of several scholarly publications including Bending Bone China: Juana Valdes’ Politics of the Skin by Josune Urbistondo (2015)[27] and Latinx Art: Artists/Markets/Politics by Arlene Dávila.
[45][46] The multimedia installation at Locust Projects explores how the refugee crisis has been documented and disseminated in mass media throughout the years, both past and present.
The project continues Valdés's thematic exploration of bodies of water, which have always played a significant role in her practice and the way she perceives and reimagines the Caribbean.
[52][53] Working with the language of anthropology and archeology, Valdés demonstrates how the legacy of colonization is entrenched in institutions, social structures, and, most importantly, in objects.
[56][57] The intention is to question the mythology of whiteness as pure relative to notions of Mestizaje in the Caribbean, and link bodies to the physical constitution of bone china and its extraction and displacement as a raw material and commercial good.