Rafa Esparza

chino, indio, negro was performed near the site of the Chinese Massacre of 1871 in response to that event.

Esparza performed El Hoyo with his brother, Beto Esparza, and fellow artist Nick Duran that same year.

El Hoyo was performed at Human Resources and reflected Esparza's identity as a queer, working-class son of immigrants.

Esparza performed in Dorian Wood's "O" video.

Rafael Esparza (born in 1981) is an American performance artist who lives and works in Los Angeles.

His work includes performances affecting his physical well-being and installations constructed from adobe bricks.

Esparza often works with collaborators, including members of his family.

Esparza's work has been shown at multiple private and public locations, such as parks, sidewalks, nightclubs, and museums.

Rafael Esparza's artistic practice delves into themes of heritage, identity, and endurance.

He frequently incorporates elements of fashion, which he uses to explore the body, as well as his Mexican-American background, showcasing a deep connection to his cultural roots.

His performances, which sometimes involve physically demanding tasks or ritualistic actions, invite audiences to contemplate the boundaries of art and the human experience.

Esparza's adobe brick installations, a nod to traditional construction methods, serve as both artistic creations and symbols of resilience.

Through his diverse body of work, Esparza challenges conventional artistic norms and prompts viewers to engage with thought-provoking concepts in unconventional settings.

Esparza was born and raised in Pasadena, California, and is the son of Mexican immigrants from Durango, Mexico.

His father, Ramón Esparza, worked in construction for over 30 years and used to make adobe bricks back in Mexico.

Later on, his father taught him how to make adobe bricks to reconcile their relationship after Esparza came out as queer.

Esparza grew up interested in art but realized that his art was not very relatable to the old master type of art that has been presented and critically acclaimed throughout history.

As he attended East Los Angeles College during his early twenties, he began to focus on performance art.

The Latino art collective Asco introduced Esparza to performance art and building installations.

His interest in performance art was further solidified when he attended UCLA, where he marked the campus with different art pieces.

In 2011 he graduated from UCLA with a bachelor's degree in fine arts.

Esparza's work is heavily influenced by politically charged topics such as ethnicity, gender studies, and the environment.

Esparza has claimed that he is influenced by the relationships between his ethnicities and society.

He uses aspects of materiality, memory, and (non)documentation as primary tools to question and critique ideologies that have been set and remain today by past generations that may be outdated.

This influence reflects in his works as they sometimes tackle topics surrounding Chicano and queer histories like colonization, male sexuality, freedom, home, and family.

Oftentimes, Esparza dives deeper into his ideologies and attempts to critique social and racial issues within mainstream art by using his art as a way of "browning the white cube", and embodying the trials and tribulations of an immigrant's life that have helped push past the narratives of traditional art spaces.

Esparza's projects typically involve collaboration around local labor and land and are done with the intent of a deeper spiritual connection.

Esparza's Staring at the Sun was a solo exhibition at MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts, where he covered the white gallery space with adobe bricks and featured a series of new paintings on the surface of the adobe, which included portraiture, landscape, and abstraction.

Esparza's intent behind this presentation was to represent his people, not only by coloring the white space within the museum with bwon adobe bricks but also by representing the multiple immigrants that came to America due to the Bracero Program.

It was an effort to redefine the unfair prejudice clouded over Hispanics, expressing that they do not need any fumigation, such as the adobe bricks that decay.

He also wanted to create a narrative on the importance of land.

In 2012, part of it was bulldozed by the US Corps of Army Engineers.

In 2013, Esparza performed chino, indio, negro with Sebastian Hernandez at Perform Chinatown 2013.

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.

The Sepulveda Wildlife Basin, the location of "CONFUSION IS SEX #3," has been used as a homeless encampment and a location for gay men to cruise for sex.

For his participation in the 2016 Made in L.A. Biennial at the Hammer Museum, Esparza created "Tierra," a field of adobe bricks from Los Angeles' dirt.

The artist's sculptures and objects were buried and unearthed in Elysian Park, a historical site of early Latinx communities' displacement.

Esparza also collaborated with artist Cassils on Independence Day 2020 to create "In Plain Sight," which was an artwork that supported the abolition of mass immigrant detention, incarnation, and the unfair prejudice that was displayed for immigrants, especially across the border.

The project was deliberately planned to be broken down into 5 parts.