I am an interdisciplinary artist based out of Richmond, Virginia. My work spans a variety of topics, from public art and media theory, to ancestral knowledge and climate justice. Often in dialogue with my Colombian-American heritage, the outcome is a practice that dances between fact and fiction through text, artifacts and community engagement.
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CATALOG



The Master’s Cabinet
Is a piece created for Escape Room, a show curated by @marisaswilliamson and Kim Bohler at UVA’s Ruffin Gallery.

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April 2024

Filed Under: Public Art, Sculpture, Place-Based, Monuments, Public Memory.



Threshold
For 1708 Gallery’s annual Inlight exhibit I created a sculpture that aimed to shed light on the complicated history of Jackson Ward.

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NOV 2023

Filed Under: Public Art, Sculpture, Place-Based, Monuments, Public Memory.



Stolen Land
A performance acknowledging the relativity of the word ‘independence’ in the guise of patriotism.

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JUL 2023

Filed Under: Public Art, Sculpture, Place-Based, Monuments, Public Memory.



After Animism
was the title of my MFA thesis exhibit at University of Hartford. The installation, which depicts an archeological exhibit in the future, asks how ancenstral knowledge, the natural sciences, and popular culture might coelesce into the artifacts of the past (our present) if a wide-scale animistic shift had occurred.

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JUN 2022

Filed Under: Animism, Speculative, Ancestral Knowledge, Artifacts, History, Ecology, Museums




The Plunder of the
Sananab of Thrae
is a short piece of speculative fiction written for Seed Broadcast, a publication based out of New Mexico. It tells the story of the domesticated banana through the perspective of an immigrant family.

Read it here ︎︎︎
MAY 2022

Filed under: Writing, Speculative Fiction,
Social Justice, Immigration, Farming, History,




Costales
is a mobile memorial created during my time living in Colombia from February to May of 2021. It was dedicated to the social leaders that had died that year in the state of Antioquia, a re-emerging issue since the signing of the Peace Accord in 2016.

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APRIL 2021

Filed under: Public Art, Community Engagement, Memorials, Social Justice, Colombia




Preserve, Revise, Remove, Radicalize
is an essay written for Futuress.org that details the ongoing struggle to take down the Confederate Statues in Richmond, Virginia, while also highlighting a selection of artists who are involved in current public art discourse.

Read it at FUTURESS︎︎︎ 
JUL 2021

Filed under: Writing, Essays, Public Art, Social Justice





The Plinth Project
is an initiative I started to foster discussion around public art commissions in Richmond, Virginia, and America as a whole.

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2021–Present

Filed under: Community Engagement, Public Art, Monuments, Memorials,  Richmond, Virginia



Faciality Maps
is an ongoing study of faciality — a theoretical systemic machine (comprised of signifiance and subjectivity) that creates the duality between established and deterratorialized language/media/images/faces. In the construction of this term coined by Deleuze and Guatarri, and expanded on by Peter Sloterdijk, the other is defined and constantly in relation to the extablished ‘order.’ A prime example is of the ubiquitous image of the European version of Jesus, or more plainly, the White Man.

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2020–Present
Filed under: Data visualization, Media Studies,
Racism,



Envelope
Part art gallery, part creative consultancy, Envelope endeavors to be an agency that promotes agency. A multimodal platform where one can consume, contribute, and critique the evolving discussions at the intersection of art, nature and politics. 

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2018–Present

Filed under: Design, Public Engagement, 



HYPHÆN
is the moniker I use to  write and record music under. 

Listen here...
2017–Present

Filed under: Video, Performance, Public Art, Community Engagement, Social Justice, Education,



Anachron Majuscule
A typeface in progress, inspired by Textura Quadrata and majuscule script.

Download & try here...
2017–Present

Filed under: Video, Performance, Public Art, Community Engagement, Social Justice, Education,



Fine Print
In collaboration with BFAMFAPHd member, Vicky Virgin, Fine Print is a three-part video series of lecture demonstrations that probes the absurdity of student loan agreements through precise choreography, carefully-chosen locations and the cryptic language of loan contracts.

View Full Project ︎︎︎
NOV 2018

Filed under: Video, Performance, Public Art, Community Engagement, Social Justice, Education,



Landscapes
A collection of landscapes.

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2015–Present

Filed under: Mixed-media, landscapes,



BLAAAH Magazine
is an arts & culture publication I started in 2008 and ran til about 2016..

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2008–2016

Filed under: print,  publishing,



©Mauricio Vargas 2023