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① Artwork:
Beso con Naturaleza Muerta
This narrative painting depicts an intimate night between two lovers in a private space. The beer cans and limes provide viewers clues as to what preceded the kiss. The spilled salt, the moon and the keys are symbols derived from Latin American folklore that reveal a more mythological series of events. This work was inspired by Frida Kahlo's painting The Bride Frightened at Seeing Life Opened. After encountering The Bride at an exhibition of Mexican Modernism, the artist immediately knew they wanted to explore the concept of still life. Arango Palacios was particularly intrigued how Kahlo's composition of fruits and objects tells a story full of characters and symbols.
With an emphasis on the figure and narrative, Juan Arango Palacios produces vibrant and lush paintings that highlight queer identities and communities marginalized through a diasporic or migratory context. The artist's colorful works depict memories, places, people and archetypes that the artist associates with the safety and survival of queer bodies—particularly in spaces that challenge their existence. In compositions centered on uplifting queer experience, Arango Palacios builds a vivid and whimsical world of sanctuary and celebration.
About their work, Arango Palacois says: "As a queer body that was raised in a post-colonial context in Colombia, my identity was shaped in the shadows of North American normativity. My sense of self was further confounded by a series of migrations that my family experienced in search of work and a more prosperous future. Moving through varying homophobic and misogynistic cultures in Louisiana and Texas, I have formed a disembodied identity that is not attached to any specific homeland and has always been challenged by the general norm."
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Juan Arango Palacios’ vibrant narrative paintings depict places and people that highlight both queer identities and other marginalized communities. The artist’s lush works are centered on uplifting the queer experience—while also exploring the artist’s own experience of growing up in a post-colonial context in Colombia and the United States. Arango Palacios’ work builds a vivid and whimsical world of sanctuary and celebration.
Juan Arango Palacios was born in 1997 in Pereira, Colombia, and lives in Chicago, IL. Arango Palacios received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago, IL (2020).
The artist has mounted solo exhibitions at Gaa Gallery in New York, NY (2024); Spinello Projects in Miami, FL (2023); Rusha & Co. Gallery in Los Angeles, CA (2023); Selenas Mountain in Chicago, IL (2023); New Image Art in Los Angeles, CA (2021); and SITE Galleries at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago, IL; among others.
Arango Palacios has been featured in group exhibitions at Gaa Gallery in Provincetown, MA (2023); Hashimoto Contemporary in Los Angeles, CA (2023); Guts Gallery in London, UK (2023); Eve Leibe Gallery in London, UK (2023); Soft Times Gallery in San Francisco, CA (2023); Mother Gallery in Los Angeles, CA (2023); Cambridge Art Association in Cambridge, MA (2022); New Image Art in Los Angeles, CA (2021); Gruin Gallery in Los Angeles, CA (2021); and elsewhere.
Arango Palacios’ work was featured in the 2020/21 viewing program at the Drawing Center in New York City. Arango Palacios has participated in artist residencies at The Macedonia Institute in Chatham, NY (2022); the Bed Stuy Art Residency in Brooklyn, NY (2021); and the Yale Norfolk Summer School of Art Residency at Yale University in Norfolk, CT (2019).
The artist received a Chicago Artists Coalition SPARK Grant in Chicago, IL (2020).
