Image of artist at home during Zoom video conference

José Guadalupe Garza was born along the US/Mexico border. He is an artist, educator, and veteran working in new and traditional media. His studio practice utilizes cinema and popular culture as theoretical frameworks to explore the changing demographic and cultural landscape of the U.S. with significance to the Latinx experience. Garza borrows from films, music, literary works, and the science fiction genre to create reimagined narratives. His projects take on various forms such as ad hoc libraries, curated screenings and exhibitions, improvisations and reenactments, experimental lectures and presentations, workshops, drawing, photography, sculpture, and video.

Garza has exhibited nationally and internationally including the 2017 Biennale de Spazio Pubblico in Rome (2017), From the Archives, Video Art in America at Everson Museum (2019), Border Control at University of Michigan Stamps Gallery (2019), and the Counterpublic Triennial (2019). He earned a BFA in Drawing from the University of Florida and an MFA in Visual Arts from Washington University in St. Louis. Currently, he serves as the Museum Educator at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, is a founding member of Monaco, an artist run cooperative in St. Louis, MO, and serves on the boards of Bread and Roses Missouri, Latinx Arts Network, Paul Artspace, and the Tarble Arts Center at Eastern Illinois University.

Some of the books mentioned in the interview -

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh and Black Hole Survival Guide by Janna Lavin and artwork by Lia Halloran and The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States by Walter Johnson, also mentioned was "The Slow Cancelation of the Future", a title of a body of work and in reference to the first chapter of Mark Fisher's book, Ghosts of My Life and Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi.

Shelter in Place (El Norte), 15 framed Polaroid photographs, 18x24 inches, 2020

WhiteNoise/BlindContour series (Skull, Books, Headphones, Fruit), archival ink on graph journal paper, 12x8.5", 2020