WHEN + WHERE

Opening reception: Thurs. August 28, 5 - 7pm

Exhibition on view: Aug. 29 - Sep. 16, 2025

Gallery hours: Mon - Fri, 9am - 4:30pm, by appointment

Gayle and Ed Roski Gallery, Roski Studios Building (IFT)

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Los Gigantes Duermen en la Sala, which translates to The Giants Sleep in the Living Room, weaves together large scale paintings of figures at ‘rest,’ focusing on themes of family, labor, and identity, seeking to answer the question: at what point do you become ‘deserving’ of rest?

Informed by childhood memories; my father's habitual post-work nap in the living room, a bright orange living room couch, and Diego Rivera Alcatraz murals, I set out to create a visual homage to my parents, highlighting how rest is a generational inheritance, specifically within immigrant families.

My work documents the places with which I’ve associated with rest and the intimate moments that are shared in these spaces: bedrooms, living rooms, dorms. While focusing on personal memory, it became impossible to separate my relationship with rest from the cultural and political significance of rest, particularly for Latinos.

In a political landscape where Latinos' identity is often reduced to utility, with dominant narratives that aim to reduce Latinos into labor-driven archetypes such as ‘the hardworking immigrant’ or ‘the sleeping giant,’ I aim to challenge these reductive identities with the radical nature of leisure.

Through this exhibition I set out to capture physical stillness, bodies caught between movement, rendered unapologetically, larger-than-life-like, vastly.