WNC Virginia A. Groot Material Exploration Residency
2024
Luis A. Sahagun was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico in 1982. He is an artist and ritualist who creates paintings and sculptures that confront the palpable inescapability of race, transforming them into acts of cultural reclamation. As the grandson of a Curandera and a practitioner of Curanderismo, Luis makes art that conjures indigenous spiritualities to embody personal histories, cultural resistance, and colonial disruption.
He has exhibited widely at venues including the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, NADA HOUSE in NYC, Charlie James Gallery (Los Angeles), among others. He has held residencies at The Lucas Artists Residency Program (LAP), Saratoga, CA, the Chicago Artist Coalition; and was a Critical Race Studies Scholar at Michigan State University. His work has been examined in publications including Artforum, the Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Tribune. His work is included in the Fidelity Collection of Boston, AltaMed Collection of Los Angeles, the Allex Ko Collection, and the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, among many others. His practice has been spotlighted as having a unique voice helping to shape, shift, and touch the world on networks such as MundoFOX, NBC, UNIVISION and WBEZ-NPR. He received his undergraduate degree from Southern Illinois University- Carbondale, an MFA at Northern Illinois University. Luis is 3Arts awardee and a 2023 United States Artist Fellow.
Sahagun is represented by LatchKey Gallery in New York City.
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