Luis Alvaro Sahagun Nuño

Luis Alvaro Sahagun Nuño was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. Sahagun creates drawings, paintings, sculptures, and performances that confront the palpable inescapability of race and transforms art into an act of cultural and spiritual reclamation. He grew up undocumented and disconnected, and his practice is in part a response to this. As the grandson of a Curandera — and himself a practitioner of Curanderismo — when he makes art, he conjures indigenous spiritualities to embody the aesthetics of personal histories, cultural resistance, and colonial disruption.

He has exhibited widely at venues including the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art (Roswell, NM), Charlie James Gallery (Los Angeles), Latchkey Gallery NYC, Arvika Art Gallery (Sweden), The National Museum of Mexican Art Chicago, EXPO Chicago, and the Chicago Cultural Center, among others. His work has been examined in publications including Artforum, the Los Angeles Times, Newcity, New American Paintings, and the Chicago Tribune. His practice has been spotlighted as having a unique voice helping to shape, shift, and touch the world on radio, podcasts, and television networks such as MundoFOX, UNIVISION and WBEZ-NPR. Sahagun has held residencies at Roswell, NM; Oaxaca, Mexico; the Chicago Artist Coalition; Mana Contemporary in Miami; and was an Artist in Residence for Critical Race Studies at Michigan State University. A 3Arts awardee, Sahagun received his undergraduate degree from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale and MFA at Northern Illinois University.