Art & Curator in Dialogue: i thought i saw you yesterday
Join artist Jesus Miguel Avena and curator hazel batrezchavez in conversation exploring themes of memory, and ancestral knowledge as part of the exhibit programing for i thought i saw you yesterday.
Sun Oct 4th 12:30-1:30pm // Wells Fargo Auditorium in the Roy E. Disney Performing Arts Center at the National Hispanic Cultural Center, 1701 4th St SW Albuquerque, NM 87102
About the artist: Jesus Miguel Avena is a Mestizo, Queer Mexican American oil painter and ceramicist based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His work explores identity, embodiment, and cultural hybridity through visual storytelling informed by Mesoamerican mythologies, Indigenous philosophies, and the concept of Nepantla — an in between space of transformation. Moving between painting and clay, Avena creates figurative works and ceramic objects that examine memory and layered Mexican American histories. He earned degrees from Santa Fe Community College (2022) and the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA,2024). Avena has exhibited nationally, participated in the Venice Biennale through an IAIA–Marist partnership, and currently serves as Visiting Assistant Professor of Ceramics at IAIA while preparing to pursue an MFA.
