Jesus Miguel Avena is a Artist based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

If you have made it this far, you are familiar with who I am. I’ll happily tell you more about myself. I am currently working on series titled, Somos de la Terra. Which translates to We are of the Earth, is a series of portraits and figurative paintings accented with ceramic frames that personify the internal dialogue of race, culture, and sexuality. The relationship in pairing large-scale paintings with ceramic components amplifies the narrative suggested through titles and expressed through the combination of the materials. Magic Realism manifests in the melancholic paintings of people and fantastical characters in desert scenes to understand and represent these aspects of cultural, sexual, and racial identity as a Mexican-American. I paint people I know as part of the subject matter to extend portraits of myself in applying cultural values and expanding on sexual and racial identity. I play with memory and personal experience to address customs, beliefs, and languages growing up between the United States and Mexico—the visual lexicon of Aztec indexical signs of duality and transformation explore the Mexican-Americans’ dualism. 
Sincerely, Jesus Avena.

Follow

Instagram @jesus_miguel_avena

Consider Subscribing to the Newsletter