Luis Antonio Navas-Reyes

My current practice incorporates concepts of loss and living, manifested in my Latin American ancestral past, identify, and cultural disembodiment. My drawings, prints, and sculptural works explore questions about the conqueror and the conquered, natures relationship to culture, and abstraction. I thread together my identity and visual vocabulary to create ancestral narratives which have been fragmented and lost through time. These ideas are captured in abstract forms in between the seen and unseen like carbon trapped in rock. I quote Humberto Ak'Abal “No es que las piedras sean mudas: solo guardan silencio” Translated into “It's not that the stones are mute: they just keep silent”. I like ideas to be collapsed or quiet in the artwork and in a way, it reflects who I am as an artist. I am interested in how culture, ideas, language, and physicality get lost, shared, transmitted and transformed over time.


bio 
Luis A. Navas-Reyes is a visual artist whose work Is a translation of abstract compositions that build upon his unique and personal visual vocabulary. His work is rooted in his identity, culture, environments, abstraction, power structures, familiar and historical histories. Utilizing media such as printmaking, drawings, ceramics, and bookmaking Luis explores themes, narratives, and forms. In 2018 Luis was awarded “Jurors choice” at artworks juried show. He was also selected to participate in the DOLPH project that contextualized contemporary art practice. Luis completed his BFA at James Madison University in 2018. received a Research grant to go to Sevilla Spain 2019. He is currently working on a 3 month post grad residency at the torpedo factory in alexandria summer 2020.