Rafa Esparza

Esparza was born and raised in Pasadena, California, and is the son of Mexican immigrants from Durango, Mexico.[1][8][9] His father, Ramón Esparza, had worked in construction for over 30 years and used to make adobe bricks back in Mexico.[9] Later on his father would teach him how to make adobe brick as a way to reconcile their relationship after Esparza came out as queer.[1][3][9]

Esparza grew up interested in art, but it was not until he attended East Los Angeles College during his early twenties that he began to focus on performance art.[1] There, he was introduced to installation and performance art through the Latino art collective Asco.[1] His interest in performance art was further solidified when he attended UCLA, where he marked the campus with different art pieces.[1][9] He graduated UCLA with a bachelor's degree in fine arts.[1]

Esparza's work reflects various themes such a politics, the environment, ethnicity and gender studies.[1] Inspired by his personal life, some of his work reflects issues with Chicano and queer histories like colonization, male sexuality, freedom, home and family.[1][3] Oftentimes Esparza attempts to critique social and racial issues within mainstream art and society by using his art as a way of "browning the white cube", and embodying working immigrant labor and bodies that pushed pass the narratives of traditional art spaces.[10] Esparza's projects typically involve collaborative projects about laboring and land, especially in his use of adobe brick-making.[11]

Esparza's Staring at the Sun was an solo exhibition at MASS MoCA'a gallery, where he covered the white gallery space with adobe bricks and features a series of new paintings on the surface of the adobe, which included portraiture, landscape, and abstraction.[11] It was an effort to represent a brown space and create and narrative on the importance of land.[11]

In 2013, Esparza performed chino, indio, negro with Sebastian Hernandez at Perform Chinatown 2013.[4] chino, indio, negro was performed near the site of the Chinese Massacre of 1871 and was performed in response to that event.[4] Also in 2013, Esparza performed El Hoyo with his brother, Beto Esparza, and fellow artist Nick Duran.[4] El Hoyo was performed at Human Resources and reflected Esparza's identity as a queer, working-class son of immigrants.[4]

Esparza performed in Dorian Wood's "O" video.[12] In August 2013, Esparza and Wood performed "CONFUSION IS SEX #3" at the Sepulveda Wildlife Basin. The piece was the third installment of a performance art series organized by Dawn Kasper, Oscar Santos, and Dino Dinco.[4] The Sepulveda Wildlife Basin, the location of "CONFUSION IS SEX #3," has in the past been used as a homeless encampment and a location for gay men to cruise for sex, and in 2012 part of it was bulldozed by the US Corps of Army Engineers.[4]

For his participation in the 2016 Made in LA Biennial at the Hammer Museum, Esparza created "Tierra," a field of adobe bricks created from dirt from Los Angeles. The artist's sculptures and objects were buried and unearthed in Elysian Park a historical site of displacement of early Latinx communities, Palo Verde, La Loma, and Bushop awhile creating the bricks were exhibited on the expanse of adobe bricks.[13][14][15][11]

Esparza has been awarded several grants. In 2014 he received an Art Matters grant and a California Community Fund Artist Fellowship and in 2015 he was the recipient of a Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant.[11][16][17] Esparza was included in the 2017 Whitney Biennial.[18] For the exhibition he created "Figure Ground: Beyond the White Field"; a gallery made of adobe bricks inside the museum.[5] The adobe room, which was made with dirt from Los Angeles River, was used as an exhibition space by other LA-based Latino artists that Esparza invited to participate.[19] In 2018, Esparza's collaborative exhibition and performance event de la calle was his first solo museum presentation at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.[20] Esparza used the museum's gallery for exhibition, production, and collaboration, where selected local artists and nightlife personalities worked collaboratively to produce works to display at the museum and for a performance.[20] The performance, *a la calle*, took place in the Fashion district of downtown Los Angeles Santee Alley.[21]

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