Bio
Juan is a multidisciplinary artist born in Del Rio, TX and raised in the southeast side of San Antonio, TX. He received his BA in Art from Connecticut College in New London, CT. He was the recipient of the Mortimer Hays-Brandeis Fellowship which funded his concentration on sound art in Mexico City for over a year. His start was in the Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum's MOSAIC program, where he participated in making murals out of hand made mosaic tiles along with other high school students. He is currently an MFA candidate at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the Art & Technology Studies Program.
Artist Statement
My practice stems from a long history of traveling between the two neighboring border towns of Del Rio, TX, and Ciudad Acuña, Mexico. I have become fascinated by the border town as a point of contact, as well as a portal to ambiguity and disorientation. I am curious about sites of transition, these and similar ones, as catalyzers for deconstructing realities and revealing the absurd. Coming from a family that participates often in flea markets, yard sales, and junkyard scrap hunting, I am familiar with using discarded objects, electronics, and everyday materials with histories to be excavated. It is in these zones where I find inspiration to become a technological bricoleur in order to escape the limitations given by conventional products and interfaces.
