Born in Mexico City, Juan Luna-Avin is an interdisciplinary artist whose work examines individual and collective identities. His practice spans mixed media painting and drawing, sculpture, and video, as well as research-driven projects that investigate subcultures, marginalized histories, and the art of counterfeiting and piracy.
He has had solo exhibitions at West Valley College Art Gallery (Saratoga, CA), Queen’s Nails Annex/Projects (San Francisco, CA), and Ceroinspiracion (Quito, Ecuador). His work has been included in group exhibitions at The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture (Riverside, CA); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco, CA); Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco, CA); Minnesota Street Project (San Francisco, CA); Southern Exposure (San Francisco, CA); Gallery 16 (San Francisco, CA); Galeria de la Raza (San Francisco, CA); SOMArts Cultural Center (San Francisco, CA); Thomas Welton Stanford Art Gallery (Stanford, CA); San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art (San Jose, CA); Vincent Price Art Museum (Monterey Park, CA); Y Gallery (New York, NY); and Casa del Lago (Mexico City, Mexico); among others. In addition, he was a longtime member of Club Unicornio, a collective of artists-DJs who play underground, kitschy, and experimental music from Latin America.
Luna-Avin holds an MFA in Art Practice from Stanford University and a BFA in Painting from the San Francisco Art Institute, where he was an Osher Scholar. He has also been awarded a Lucas Artist Fellowship at Montalvo Arts Center, a Shandaken: Storm King artist residency, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant, and a McNamara Family Creative Arts Grant. He resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and teaches in the Visual and Public Art Program at CSU Monterey Bay.
A CV is available here.