LATINx ARTISTS YOU SHOULD KNOW
Please be patient as we continue to update and add amazing latino, latina, latinx, xicano, xicana, xicanx, artists to this page.
JUVENTINO ARANDA
The artist takes his personal experiences as a Chicano, treading a fine line as he expresses his disapproval of Latino marginalization. He tells stories using familiar imagery in esoteric compositions. Aranda is able to tap into every LatinX's childhood while making them guess his intent with every sculpture he creates.
Visit his website @ juventinoaranda.com or @ gregkucera.com/aranda.htm
Jake Prendez
aka Prendez is a renowned Chicano artist exhibiting his art and lecturing across the country. Jake is also the owner/director of the Nepantla Cultural Arts Gallery on the border of West Seattle and White Center.
His oil paintings and digital artwork are created with a specific focus on themes relating to Chicanx and Indigenous culture, social justice, pop culture, and satire.
Jake’s work is an amalgamation of his life experiences. It represents his Chicano background, his life lived back and forth from Los Angeles and Seattle, it represents love and heart break, oppression and resilience, laughter and tears. It’s as if he took all his life experiences, put in a blender and poured out onto canvas.
For booking and exhibition inquiries contact Jake Prendez at jakeprendez.com or at jakeprendez@gmail.com
Also, don't forget to visit his gallery @ www.nepantlaculturalarts.com/
Rafael Esparza
L.A. artist, rafael esparza turns a family craft into a versatile artform, by using adobe bricks which he makes from locally sourced materials and he creates often large installations that reflect the ephemeral qualities and erasable history that laborers provide.
emilia cruz
Emilia Cruz knows just how to capture human emotion as well as the LatinX experience. If her portraits are looking at you, they pierce into your soul. Not only that, you either feel an intimate connection with her subject or you feel like an intruder, peeping into an intimately private moment in time. Cruz knows how to deliver the right emotive response. It the subject looks longingly away, the viewer is left to ponder in a similar fashion. This painter deserves notoriety for capturing typical Latinidad, and it is worth mentioning her art which is a major focal point in the series "Gentefied" on Netflix.
saner
Saner takes
Reinaldo gil zambrano
Reinaldo Gil Zambrano is an award-winning printmaking artist based in Spokane, WA from Caracas, Venezuela. From an early age, RGZ began collecting unique stories from random social encounters that highlight the common aspects of the human identity that later enriched the visual narratives of his drawings and relief prints.
His narrative raises questions of daily issues equally experience by people across culture and borders using relief printing as a storytelling tool for its illustration and reflection. He studies the universal idea of home and how it affects individual personalities by exploring iconography derived from the Majority World and fascinating storytelling inspired by Hispanic literature’s magical realism and illustrations from the Venezuelan Rosana Farias. His wordless visual narratives seek to challenge the limitations of the written language and bring people together in celebration of the commonality of their collective experiences.
His desire to promote the printmaking practice has guided him towards the development of projects such as “First Vandal Steam Roller Project”, “The Ink Rally”, projects where large carved pieces were printed on fabric using an asphalt roller and the help of many printmaking enthusiasts. RGZ have been collaborating with local non-profits in the development of the Spokane Print Fest a venue that celebrates all things print related where local universities, students, artists, instructors and professors offered live printing demos and exhibited artwork in the pursue of promoting accessible printmaking to the rest of the community. Such projects have worked as communal developers and forces of integration between the academic, artistic and larger community in the Northwest.
Reinaldo is currently an adjunct instructor in the art department at Eastern Washington University as well as an artist member at the Saranac Art Projects and Co-founder of the Spokane Print & Publishing Center
El Comalito Collective
El Comalito Collective is an art gallery and community space that supports and builds community by showcasing underrepresented voices through a collective of works that spark consciousness. This is a space by and for community
El Comalito Collective was born out of the necessity to create a platform for underprivileged artists to be able to connect and build a network of support. El Comal (The griddle) serves as the metaphor for the platform for which the space was created as el comal is the platform that serves as one of the catalysts for heating up tortillas and bringing family together. In the past el comal was centrally located and its heat weaved the family together, much like present day kitchens do. Tortillas are made from corn which is indigenous to our land and churned, ground, and transformed into maza for tortillas which then get heated on a platform, the comal, to act as sustenance and food. El Comalito Collective hopes to serve as the platform that will create sustenance for the Vallejo community through art.
Established in 2015.
Abel and Edgar-Arturo who are coupled and have experiences navigating the art world both as individual gay brown men as well as a gay couple of color decided to open up the space to honor underrepresented voices and together build opportunities for communities to network and create support. El Comalito Collective was born from the belief that art should be both for and by community.
ABEL RODRIGUEZ
Abel Rodriguez is a Queer Xicano artist who was born in Fairfield, CA in 1979. He received a MFA degree in Painting from Yale School of Art in 2010, and a BFA in Drawing and Painting and Graphic Design from California State University, Long Beach in 2007. He was selected to participate in the Artist in Residence Program at Recology, S.F. in 2011. He has exhibited nationwide and currently works and resides in Vallejo, CA.
EDGAR-ARTURO CAMACHO-GONZALEZ
Edgar-Arturo Camacho-González is a Queer Xicano community activist, artist, and poet living on occupied Ohlone land. He is committed to making the communities he is part of safe, vibrant and welcoming for all by networking with people who seek to change the world through a decolonial lens. Edgar-Arturo has exhibited his work and poetry across the country and is a co-founder of El Comalito Collective.
Pavel Acevedo
I’m an Oaxacan printmaker based in the suburban area of Riverside, California. My artwork used the traditional language relief print on wood to get involved with the D.I.Y. Community thats how my artwork evolve to from printmaking, education, murals and be able to transcendent out of Riverside, in 2007 I was awarded with the fellowship from “James Irvine Foundation” the city of Riverside and have been honored by the Riverside Art Museum. In 2017 I was part of two simultaneous projects at Getty Pacific Standard Time, Visualizing Language: Oaxaca in LA at the Los Angeles Central Library and Self Help Graphics, Los Angeles, CA and “ Myth and Mirage” with photographer Douglas McCulloh at the Riverside Art Museum.
In 2019 I was award with the artist fellowship of KALA Art Institute in Berkeley and 2020 an Artist in Residence at Self Help Graphics in Los Angeles. As a printmaker I’ve being available to be an educator, in 2019 I collaborate with “I learn America” in an educational program with high schools in Los Angeles and Maryland, D.C. tutoring students in creating visuals from his personal narratives. I’m part of “Artist Demo” by Speedball, and I received training in 2019 in Statesville, N.C.
My printmaking work has expand into a mural painting, allowing to work in “We Rise L.A.” in 2019 with artist Kate Deciccio in a indoor mural other murals have being completed in The Wignall Contemporary Art Museum and the Chaffey College in Rancho Cucamonga, Department of Art & Design in La Sierra University in Riverside,Ca and a public commission by the city of Riverside located in Downtown Riverside. I started my personal printshop in the suburbs of Riverside as a collaboration with “Desert Triangle Print Carpeta”.
Solo exhibits “Traces of Faces” at Division 9 Gallery, Riverside and “Dryland Commute” at Avenue 50,“The South” Comalito Collective, Vallejo, “Inland Empire” College of Canyons, Santa Clarita.
I have several group exhibits at SPARC, Self -Help Graphics, Bunny Gunner Gallery, El Paso Museum, Riverside Art Museum,Blood Orange Infoshop, Jen Though Gallery, Mission Cultural Center and Pain Sugar Gallery.
Follow him on IG @Pavel_acevedo or visit his speedball page at https://www.speedballart.com/pro-artist-network/pavel-acevedo/