User:Alexisduranduran/sandbox

Rafa Esparza
Born in Pasadena, California to Mexican immigrants in 1981, Rafa Esparza is a Mexican-American performance artist, sculptor, and painter. Esparza lives and works around Los Angeles, California and expresses the queer Chicanx experience through his art.

As a queer Chicano, Esparza uses his performances to shine light on political issues such as police brutality, gentrification, and class divides. He also creates art out of experiences in his personal life including the relationship between his parents and other loved ones as well as the struggles of being queer in Chicanx/Latinx spaces.

Upbringing and Education
Esparza was first truly introduced to the arts during his time at East Los Angeles College where he studied fine arts. He continued his education at UCLA where he earned a bachelor's degree in the same field. During this period, Esparza grew a passion for performance art and exhibitions.

Professional career and Achievements
Following his time at UCLA, Esparza held his first solo exhibition at Vincent Price Art Museum in Monterey Park, California after holding a two-month residency in Elysian Park. In the performance titled "they spent their time doing nothing. they let intimacy fuse them", Esparza describes the importance of intimacy and showing appreciation toward one another. In order to convey the true message, the performance was shown to invited loved ones. Following this performance, he went on to perform at numerous art institutions such as Bowtie Project (2014), Hammer Museum (2016), the Whitney Museum of American Art (2017), Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2018), and Performance Space New York and the Ellipse (2019). Furthermore, his solo exhibition locations include Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (2015), Bowtie Project (2015), Ballroom Marfa (2017), Atkinson Gallery (2017), ArtPace (2018), MASS MoCA (2019), and Commonwealth and Council (2021). Esparza's often labor-intensive performances reflect stories of undocumented immigrants, relationships to native land and colonization, ancestry within POC communities, and the complexity of binary identity. Esparza is currently experimenting with painting portraits of loved ones on slabs of adobe as featured on his Instagram page.

Recent Accomplishments
2022 Featured in PRIME Arts Next Generation book by publisher Phaidon

2022 Won the Perez Prize from the Perez Art Museum in Miami, Florida

2022 Presented a Lecture series at Pitzer College with fellow artist Beatriz Cortez

2022 Featured in The New York Times alongside other Los Angeles artists