Location: Oakland, CA
Medium: Drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, video
Website: josejoaquinfigueroa.com
José Joaquín Figueroa was born in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1986 and is based in Oakland, California. He received a B.F.A. from Cooper Union (2014) and an M.F.A. from the University of California, Berkeley (2016), and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2009. His work was included in the 46th Annual UC Berkeley MFA Graduate Exhibition at BAMPFA. He held Graduate Fellowships (2016–2017) and an Affiliate residency (2017–2019) at the Headlands Center for the Arts, and participated in the Fire Island Artist Residency (FIAR) in 2018. In addition to his studio practice, Figueroa works as an educator.
A self-described “impressionist” and keen observer of everyday life, Figueroa has built a drawing archive of more than a thousand works made on-site and in public spaces. He conceptualizes his multimedia body of work as a “fictional theme park” that challenges the separation between the sacred and the profane—examining how colonization and imperialism have collapsed geography, and working toward what he calls a “queer atlas” that revises those spaces and histories.
Figueroa works across drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, and video, often beginning with panoramic observational drawings developed in real time in public spaces. He uses postmodern strategies—recycling historical styles and references—to explore “the fragility of fleeting moments, the complications of interlayered identities, and the impossibility of a single perspective.” His practice incorporates text as a formal element and follows ethnographic methodologies, moving fluidly from intimate field sketches to large-scale paintings, artist talks, and short fiction. He is particularly associated with the documentation of queer spaces: clothing-optional beaches, clubs, drag viewing parties, and community gatherings.
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