ALUMNI
JESUS D. TORRES
Jesus D. Torres b.1995 is an artist living and working in New York, Mexico City, and soon to be relocated to Los Angeles. In 2019 he earned a B.F.A. in sculpture from SUNY at Purchase College and was a resident at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He developed his relationship with his practice at a young age by working for his father in their family masonry business. Torres gets inspiration from the intense labor implemented by a person in maintaining and transforming the landscape of someone else's home. He uses materials directly taken from job locations and fuses aspects of lived experiences into the artwork. Torres' work unfolds stories of familial history through cultural idioms and semiotics. The various layers of Torres' work raise questions of socioeconomic mobility, ethics of labor, and the living circumstances of future progeny.
MADELINE LINK
Madeline Link was born in 1996 in Calgary, Alberta. She is a musician, writing, recording, and publishing music as PACKS. She also uses stream of consciousness research and corporate powerpoint language to weave several disparate concepts into one big bundle of confusion, otherwise known as "The Uncertainty Seminar." This process also manifests itself in other hands-on mediums such as miniatures, clay, paper mache, short fiction, and video performance art.
BORIS GRANCHE
Boris Granche is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice is located halfway between sculpture and photography through an installation perspective. His work addresses some environmental issues related to the reign of obsolescence, architectural degradation or myths surrounding the horticultural industry. In reference to architecture, to environment and to the living, his installations explore a range of varied materials such as plastic, water, air, natural plants as well as artificial.
ANNA LEE ROEDER & ERIK VASILAUSKAS
Dream Scene Placemaking is the creative team of Anna Lee Roeder and Erik Vasilauskas; artists based in Kalamazoo, Michigan (USA). Together they paint murals and facilitate shared community experiences in public space. They have often combined art and travel, and have painted murals all over the world. During their time at Casa Lu, they painted a colorful rose mural on an exterior wall of the residence. They each also have independent creative practices in oil painting, film photography and cut paper collage.
COCO BRUN
As a French art director and designer, I like to combine old-school processes such as painting and hand drawing with modern digital tools. After five years studying fine arts in Paris, I started to forged a successful career as a communication consultant for up-and-coming European fashion designers as well as leading couture houses. In 2004, I moved to London to develop my illustration work, creating imagery for major publications spanning both the independent & mainstream press (eg. Vogue, ELLE, Vanity Fair, Interview, Nylon and Muse). In addition, my work has been published in publications including Taschen, Gestalten, Victionary, and featured in exhibitions and installations in exhibitions in London, Paris, Los Angeles and Barcelona. It was during my time in London that I also conceived and launched the Forget Me Not studio.
YVE GUZMAN
b. Silver Spring, MD, 01/17/1991
Painting, sculpture and printmaking.
I am among many artists throughout history who have found landscapes inspiring and use this as a means for expressing an internal narrative. While the work is simultaneously expansive and compressed: its overarching story is a satire on our cosmic ontology. The environment’s syntax is created by primary figures such as rocks and leaves, supported by the lingering subtext of swirling gradients and vortices. These repeating interstellar bodies are symbolic of growth and collapse: an ongoing theme throughout the work.
LEA MARCACCINI
Lea Marcaccini is a French/Italian mixed media artist, working with photography, drawing & collage. Born and raised in a nature reserve on the Pacific coast of Mexico, she has been surrounded and inspired by the diverse and rich culture it has to offer. From pre-Hispanic art and Mythology, to vivacious colors, spirituality, to its vast flora & fauna. Such themes are gently conveyed into her work, indulging in both the friction and synergy of color, used as a form of communication.
Lea has shown her work in numerous group shows in the UK, Paris & Los Angeles, as well as displayed in the Drake hotel in Toronto. Her work has also featured in publications such as British Vogue, Vogue Mexico, So It Goes, Based Instabul & Ingenue Magazine.
ELMI VENTURA MATA
Elmi Ventura Mata is a visual artist, born in El Salvador and based in the East Coast of the US. His work explores the narrative format through the pictorial framework of the canvas. His investigation is guided through a focus on the configuration of the painted subject through a critical framework informed by the history of painting. The mergence between abstraction and figuration; thesis and antithesis offers a transformative nature in the work. In his words, “As a painter, it’s my calling to sift reality and pour its aspects onto the canvas through the brush. In doing so; a straightfoward vision and sincere voice emerges. Painting offers the artist an opportunity to view and observe life through a unique lens. Imagination is a powerful lens polish. An integral aspect to the painting process. Imagination also allows access into the subconscious, which coincidentally defines us."
Elmi has been awarded a residency at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, a grant from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation and his work has been featured in New American Paintings. Elmi earned his MFA from The Tyler School of Art's Painting Department in Philadelphia. He also holds a BFA in Painting and Drawing from The Cleveland Institute of Art.
AIDA LIZALDE
Aida Lizalde is a multimedia artist born in Mexico and based in California. She uses her artwork to raise questions about power structures and explore identity and mestizaje through narrative and symbolism. Lizalde invites the viewer to consider the nuances of navigating assimilation to American culture, capitalism, neocolonialism, and politics. She employs an array of media, including construction materials, textiles, performance, video, photography, and ceramics to create her work.
Her work has been exhibited at Chandra Cerrito Contemporary, Torrance Art Museum, Southern Exposure, Gearbox Gallery, the Museum of Northern California of Chico, the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, Beacon Project Sacramento, SOMArts South of Market Cultural Center, The Latino Center of Art and Culture of Sacramento, etc. She is a member of Axis Gallery and has been a recipient of the Vermont Studio Center Fellowship, Young Space Grant, the Hopkins Endowment for Studio Art Students, the Crocker Kingsley Art Award, and the Herb Alpert Scholarship for Emerging Young Artists among others
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LESDAVAG
Lesdavag is an interdisciplinary Mexican American artist whose work regards concepts of life, death, and humanity. His art is a realization that space and time are not objective phenomena, but rather the tools our mind uses to connect everything –energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only change in form.
Through his art, Lesdavag explores memories and events that made an impact on his life and the people around him. For the most part, he uses raw materials like dirt and wood and in some cases found objects, to successfully convey his concepts.
Lesdavag has been part of several art exhibitions in the United States and Mexico, most recently exhibited at the art gallery in the Mexican Consulate of Tucson. He was born in Denver, Colorado, and studied Fine Arts in Tucson at the University of Arizona. Currently, Lesdavag resides in Mexico City where he works as a visual designer and continues developing new works of art..
CEDRIC TAI
"Hello, my name is Cedric Tai and I make art and friends spanning Detroit, Glasgow, and Los Angeles. I’m an un-disciplinary artist, who went and got Art Education certification from Michigan State U., and one of those MFAs from the Glasgow School of Art.
I’ve received a 25K Kresge Arts Fellowship, a 25K Knight Foundation Challenge Grant, and have gallery representation with Simone DeSousa Gallery based in Detroit, Michigan.
I make artwork to tickle, cajole and inspire people to consider their fears, limits and individual aspirations with curiosity.
Recently someone said that I’m 'Pathologically Curious’, which is the most tender way I’ve ever heard my ADHD (aka Time-Blindness, aka Intention Deficit Disorder) described back to me.
Some of my work is setup systematically (“Brixels” tessellations/“They Didn’t Go” excel spreadsheets/“Reverse-Pick-Pocketing” workshops) so that I can focus on the way that I want to elicit a response from a specific audience. Other works are like love letters wherein I come to know someone through the process of making the work.
What brings my work together is the magic element of PLAY; Play that begins in the landscape of the unconscious, made of doubt, ritual, grief, healing, honesty, tiny pleasures, guilt and responsibility. All of these elements are authentic and alive in my work, speaking to each other.
That conversation is what I hope the viewer experiences."
SARAH THIBAULT
Sarah Thibault is an artist and writer based in San Francisco. Her artwork has been exhibited in the US and abroad, including an upcoming solo exhibition at Fahrenheit Madrid in Madrid, Spain. Past projects include exhibitions with Steve Turner Contemporary, BAMPFA, Interface Gallery, HILDE Gallery and the ART in Embassies program in Montevideo, Uruguay. Thibault and her work have been featured in Artsy, CARLA, The San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Magazine, SFAQ, The Examiner, The Huffington Post, and 7x7. She is a Charter Resident of the curated Minnesota Street Project studio program in San Francisco. She holds an MFA from the California College of the Arts, a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and a BA from the University of Wisconsin- Madison.
GABI MAGALY
Gabi Magaly is an emerging artist born in Bryan, Texas. Magaly received her MFA in Visual Arts at the University of Texas at San Antonio in 2020. She works predominantly in the medium of photography, but also employs other mediums like sculptural installation and embroidery. Magaly has exhibited in solo shows at Satellite Gallery, Huntsville, TX; The Brick and Presa House Gallery, San Antonio, TX. Her numerous group exhibitions include at Luis Leu Gallery, Karlsruhe, Germany; The Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, San Antonio, TX; Won Best in Show at “56th Annual Juried Competition Exhibition” at Masur Museum in Monroe, Louisiana. Magaly was honored with a Graduate School Travel Stipend to give an artist talk at SPE Conference at Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX. She was recently awarded two CAMMIE awards from Blue Star Contemporary and Luminaria Contemporary Cultural Center during Contemporary Art Month 2020. Magaly currently lives and works in San Antonio, Texas.
MATTHEW ANDERSON
Matthew Anderson (b. 1989, Indiana, USA) is an artist, musician, and software consultant living in Mexico City. He grew up in a conservative religious family with three older brothers. Love, support, and fun abounded throughout his upbringing, but emotional maturity was a foreign concept to him until his late twenties.
He now seeks to attune himself to his emotions as they are triggered by ordinary scenes and objects from life. A watch on a table, a house on a hill, a dog on a couch - these simple daily snapshots can serve as vehicles for drawing out, feeling fully, and integrating past imprinted emotions and their present situational application. He hopes to make this process more natural for himself and more accessible to others through playful yet profound artistic expression.
DELPHINE TOMES
Delphine Tomes is an artist and translator based in Mexico City. She has an MA in Art History + Spanish from Edinburgh University (2008-2012), which taught her that contemporary art could be a lot more approachable and a bit less serious, and she likes playing with that middle ground and focusing on the day-to-day bread and butter. She's an optimist and her work aims towards a more inclusive collective memory.
Co-founder of Mi Valedor (Mexico City’s version of the street paper "The Big Issue"), a conceptual and colorful portrait of everyday life in the city that offers a legitimate income to homeless and vulnerable sectors. She also runs a micro-poetry project De Reversa ("Reverse It") with rapper Dayra Fyah, which plays with the misogynist lyrics of popular songs and turns new, neutralized lyrics into poems, raps, posters, and new songs.
LESLIE MOODY CASTRO
Leslie Moody Castro is an independent curator and writer whose practice is based on itinerancy and collaboration. She has produced, organized, and collaborated on projects in Mexico and the United States for more than a decade, and her repertoire of critical writing is also reflective of her commitment to place. She is committed to creating moments of artistic exchange and dialogue and as such is a co-founder of Unlisted Projects, an artist residency program in Austin, Texas. In 2017, she was selected as Curator and Artistic Director of the sixth edition of the Texas Biennial, and was recently the first invited curator in residence at the Galveston Artist Residency. Moody Castro earned a Master's degree at The University of Texas at Austin in Museum Education with a portfolio supplement in Museum Studies in 2010, and a Bachelor's degree in Art History at DePaul University in Chicago in 2004, and has been awarded two grants from the National Endowment of the Arts for her curatorial projects (2016, 2017). In addition to her firm belief that the visual arts creates moments of empathy, Moody Castro also believes that Mariachis make everything better.
CORINNE THIESSEN
Corinne Thiessen is a multidisciplinary artist born in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She holds an MFA from the University of Lethbridge. Her practice is informed by an interest in human behaviour, comedy, failure, healing, and purpose.
Thiessen has exhibited at Ortstermin, Berlin, at the Esker Foundation and Stride Gallery in Calgary, at Soo Visual Arts in Minneapolis, and a solo exhibition, Factory Logic at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery in Lethbridge.
Residencies and collaborative projects at the Banff Centre, ZK/U, Berlin; Island Mountain Arts, B.C.; Centre Pompadour, France; The Museum of Loss and Renewal, Italy; and presently at Casa Lü in Mexico City, also include published work in MAP Magazine and in the 2019 Printing Plant Art Book Fair in Amsterdam. Thiessen has taught sessionally at Lethbridge College and in the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Lethbridge.
MICHAEL A. SALTER
Michael A. Salter is a Professor of Art at the University of Oregon, Department of Art, School of Art + Design, College of Design, Art & Technology Program. Salter's work has been shown nationally and internationally in Beijing, Wuhan, Brussels, New York, L.A., Portland, London, Amsterdam, Miami, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Seattle, Atlanta and Chicago. His work has been featured in Art In America, Best Art NY 2009, Dot Dot Dash, Pictoplasma2, Grab Magazine, Arkitip Magazine, Repellent Magazine, and LoDown Magazine. He has exhibited solo installations at The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston Salem, NC, at the Charles de Jonghe gallery, Brussels, Rice University Art Gallery, Houston, Jeff Bailey Gallery, NYC, The University of Texas, Arlington, and Black Market Gallery in Los Angeles, California, The University of Colorado, UCCS Gallery of Contemporary Art Colorado Springs and the New Britain Museum of America Art in CT.
MACHINE MCLAUGHLIN
Machine is an artist residing in the Los Angeles area, they have shown work in the US, Canada and the UK. Using recurring themes of strength and sport, Machine’s work consists of a juxtaposition of masculine and feminine symbols as a challenge to conventional gender representation.
REBECA HUNTT
Rebeca Huntt is an Afro-Latina filmmaker, multi-media artist, and native-New Yorker. She wrote and directed her first feature-length film, BEBA, which is currently in post-production, and was selected to be in the IFP Documentary Lab 2019/2020. Rebeca was a 2018 Uniondocs Collaborative Fellow, through which she directed ¡Hay Coro! which premiered at the Oaxaca Film Festival and on BronxNet Public Television. She wrote, directed, and/or edited various short films which premiered at Art of Brooklyn Film Festival, The Fader Magazine, and Elsewhere Brooklyn. Rebeca participated in the 2018 Kickstarter Residency and the 56th Annual New York Film Festival’s Artist Academy. She worked in event planning for over three years, producing art benefits, activist-based panels, and parties with creatives such as Venus X and Tschabalala Self. Rebeca received her BA from Bard College in 2012.
YENI MAO
Yeni Mao was born in Canada, and spent his developmental years in the United States, Sweden and Taiwan. He received a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and subsequently trained in foundry work in California, and the architectural industries of New York. In 2016 Mao relocated to Mexico City. Yeni Mao’s work has been featured in numerous international exhibitions. Most recently, Mao presented “vol. 2: cabal”, an installation of ceramic-based sculptures at PAOS in Guadalajara, Mexico and participated in the group show “The Waste Land” and Nicelle Beauchene Gallery in New York and “Luego La Forma” at Galeria de Art Mexicano and “Escultura de la Tierra” at Complejo Cultural Los Pinos in Mexico City. Last December he created a site specific installation with AGUAS in the special projects section of Untitled Art Fair in Miami. He has presented his work in a large variety of exhibitions and projects, including the IX Bienal De Artes Visuales Nicaraguenses, Zidoun-Bossuyt Gallery, Arróniz Arte Contemporáneo, Anonymous Gallery, Present Company, Allegra LaViola Gallery, Invisible-Exports, and Andrew Edlin Gallery. Mao has been awarded multiple residencies including Casa Wabi in Mexico, The Lijiang Studio and Red Gate Gallery in China, The Fountainhead Residency in Miami, OAZO-AIR in Amsterdam, and Flash Atöyle in Turkey. Mao’s work has been written about in The New York Times, Time Out New York, The Advocate, The Village Voice, and the Bangkok Post. Upcoming in May 2020, Mao will have a solo exhibition at Fierman Gallery in New York.
KAVEL RAFFERTY
Kavel Rafferty is a queer illustrator and artist based in the creative seaside town of Margate, near London UK.
Kavel works with drawing, found materials, paper ephemera, textures, photography, paint and collage.
Everything used in her project ‘Welcome To My Head - Margate to Mexico City’ at Casa Lü will be sourced in CDMX, the majority of it from flea markets and or street finds. Using as much second hand and sustainable material as possible means these pieces will have little impact environmentally.
Colours will be taken from her exploration of the barrios.
Kavel has no control over what she finds, depending on the day, the market, her luck, serendipity, but she will control how the viewer see these paper ‘treasures’. An organised chaos of image and colour.
Kavel will create a room setting, using redacted images and text. These palimcest assembledges will paper the walls of her room. An immersive installation based on her experiences in this wonderfully vibrant City.
GARRET KANE
Garret Kane is a mixed media artist based in Brooklyn NY developing the concept of Neo-Naturalism, defined as the distortion and recreation of ‘base nature’ through human technology. A childhood and adolescence spent immersed in his own imagination and drawings, he graduated from SUNY Albany with a major in communications and minor in fine art.
Shortly after he began a career as an art director in advertising, working his way up to a Creative Director role. Over the course of the next decade he spent every spare second learning both traditional and 3D sculpting techniques until finally he left advertising to pursue sculpture full-time. Since then he’s had several solo exhibitions, installations in New York’s Flatiron building, a residency in Brazil and an upcoming residency in Mexico City.
As a mixed media sculptor, Garret strives to capture the fragility and beauty of human nature. But it is his ethos that in today’s world, drawing attention to a problem is not enough. The art itself should aim to fix it. That’s why 10% of all profits from the sale of work is donated to environmental charities.
MARTIN ZAWADZKI
Martin Zawadzki lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Active as a visual artist, producer, author and filmmaker. His mostly documentary approach to his work, he explores realities on different levels with different techniques including photography, painting, video, sound and language. In 1995 he got his Diploma from the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (dffb). His graduation film ISOLATOR II was awarded with Preis der deutschen Filmkritik and Adolf-Grimme-Preis in 1998. Currently he is working on a documentary radio feature with the title: BINDUNGSLOS – DETACHED.
At Casa Lü he will show graphic art prints of scratched windows from the Metro CDMX, a continuation of a former project he did in Berlin with scratched windows from the Berlin tube.
“Due to their condition, the removed window panes from the Berlin S-Bahn were used like printing plates, so that the marks left by random passengers were put on paper. The „originals" are the potential basis for a print run through its conversion. This procedure demonstrates that any gesture of rebellion and destruction (and thus also scratching) can be translated into a cultural language, into a cultural convention. The artistic use of “printing plates" also shows the formal qualities of certain examples of scratching that have already been qualified as irrelevant or harmful.”CK
ALI PRINTZ
Ali Printz is a historical, figurative painter and curator who splits her time between Appalachia and Philadelphia. She works with various mediums including oil, acrylic, collage, sewn fabric, as well as technology-based mediums. Her work explores ideas of throw-away culture and discarded photographic memories and the reworking of these in order to draw attention to societal and environmental issues. Her most recent projects include “Debtfair,” a piece by Occupy Museums in the 2017 Whitney Biennial, “Appalachian Spring” a traveling solo show within Appalachia in 2018, and a number of group shows in 2019-20. Ali was born in West Virginia and considers herself an Appalachian artist. She has lived and worked in Spain, Panama, Washington, D.C, and resided in New York City until beginning her PhD in Philadelphia. She received her BFA in Painting and a BA in Art History from West Virginia University in 2009 and an MA in Contemporary Art from Sotheby’s Institute of Art in 2012. She is currently pursuing a cross disciplinary PhD in Modern and Contemporary Appalachian Art and Painting at the Tyler School of Art at Temple University.
KELSEY SCHWETZ
Kelsey Shwetz is a Canadian born painter who lives and works in Ridgewood, Queens. She completed the Advanced Painting Intensive at Columbia University, and has been a guest lecturer at UCLA, Pratt Institute, and Laguardia Community College. Shwetz has exhibited in New York, Miami, Germany, Slovakia, Toronto, and Montreal and was awarded fellowships at the Vermont Studio Center and CanSerrat Residency in Barcelona. Publications featuring her work include: Maake Magazine, ArtMaze Magazine, Whitehot Magazine, and the Globe and Mail. Her most recent solo exhibition was in the spring of 2018 at Brethren Gallery in New York.
LEON BOWERS
London–based artist, illustrator, painter Leon Bowers invites the viewer to explore peculiar dreamscapes, each of which reflects the rich tapestry of ideas, insights and anxieties entangled in the deepest recesses of his subconscious.
Unfurling beyond the confines of figurative images, his work reflects a search for a more honest approach to painting and drawing. He yearns for a somnambulistic style that, informed by his background in portraiture, is entirely more fluid, evoking not only the amorphous texture, but also the sense of boundlessness of dreams.
Leon Bowers was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1981 and relocated to London, UK in 2004. He participated in the Turps painting course in London. To date, Bowers’ work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at On The Floor, London, UK (2019), Exposure Gallery, London, UK (2014) and Tina We Salute You, London, UK (2011) and included in group exhibitions at Mall Galleries, London (2019), PADA, Lisbon, Portugal (2019) and World of Wonder Storefront Gallery, Los Angeles, USA (2007). He lives and works in East London, UK.
ANTONIO DE LA ROSA
Antonio de la Rosa, Mexico City 1983. An active nature drove Antonio to the art practice, primarily through painting which he has been doing for more than a decade non stop. His painting routine consists of mixing acrylics to study colour on different surfaces like dry leafs or post cards. Antonio has a College degree at UIA on Industrial Design and a Masters on Visual Arts in UNAM. The main theme around his designs and his works of art are nature based, focusing primarily on the study of plants and landscapes, using wood to express it on. Antonio's paintings are interventions on different objects and his main focus is around the idea of time passing by and its impact on the surface of all things, even us.