Juan Arango Palacios

Artist and Designer

Channeling my experience as a queer Colombian immigrant, my work investigates how representing the figure through lenses of queerness and migration establishes a cultural vocabulary that bolsters a sense of safety and belonging. My practice activates the figure’s gaze, physique, fashion expression, and setting to depict tense narratives that recount the queer Latinx experience to a broader audience.

Employing painting, drawing, and weaving processes, I produce images highlighting how gender and sexuality are conveyed through cultural identity. I reference and challenge the art historical canon by engaging with the fluid and boundless medium of oil painting.Placing myself within a tradition of Latin American figurative artists such as Saturnino Herrán, Debora Arango, and Fernando Botero, I produce images that address contemporary socio political factors that affect my life. My images resist homophobia and are a reflection of my chosen community, intimate encounters, and the unfulfilled experiences that linger in the mind of an immigrant. These narratives explore instances of passion, conflict, and questions of what my identity may have looked like had I never left my homeland.      

 I also champion drawing and textile-making in my practice. I see drawing as a fundamental process: the beginning to any creative endeavor, and an immediate form of making that allows visions and ideas to flow freely onto the page. Weaving, alternatively, provides a much slower and meditative process that helps me engage with my family history and tap into an ancestral artform that is inherently human. I find great value in appropriating traditionally heterosexual subjects into homoromantic imagery. The vivid lyrics from Cumbia music, the alluring narratives of magical realism literature, and the vast reaches of our convoluted history are paired with the modern queer experience to create images glorifying the prosperity of marginalized people. 

My work is driven by dynamic compositions and vibrant color palettes. Drawing from the strong diagonals I grew up seeing in Catholic images, I craft pictorial structures that are visually energetic, pointing to traditions of mythos and iconography. Implementing the theories of color philosophers like Josef Albers and David Batchelor, I employ color in a way that is evocative of hazy memories, boisterous nightclubs, or fantastical visions. Uplifting the experiences of queer people and immigrants I exhibit these narratives with the goal of establishing a visual culture that dignifies such identities within the Latinx diaspora in the United States. Through the diligent exploration of my artistic vision I contribute disruptive artwork that reshapes the cultural landscape in galleries, institutions, and contemporary culture at large.