LATINx ARTISTS YOU SHOULD KNOW
Your archive for contemporary artists: a one stop shop to find new inspiration. Learn what Latino, Latina, LatinX, Hispanic, Chicano/a and ChicanX artists are making, how they make it, and why they make. A Growing Resource for all, especially aspiring and practicing artists
LATINX
installation
ARTISTS
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