Grant Summary
Fellowship.
Keywords
Artist Statement
Mexican, queer and raised on Chicago’s Southside, I am intimate with social conflict and could never practice art-making purely for conceit. For me, art-making is a means to foster radical change. My art works scrambles disciplines and genres to debase notions of artistic legitimacy and occurs outside or in tactical relation to the mainstream art system and is disseminated through alternative exhibition/distribution means. While this may not have yielded careerist success, my projects have changed everyday people while proving political art can be aesthetically sophisticated and have rigorous, dynamic content. Such work is typified by 2017 projects: BRUJOS, a webseries gone viral following 4 gay Latino grads that are also witches slaying white supremacy; The Hoodoisie, a traveling live news show delivering radical takes on culture and politics; and Meet Juan(ito) Doe, a play based on Chicago's Mexican-Americans' stories and presented at a renovated storefront on the city's Southside.
  • BRUJOS (Still) 2017, Ricardo Gamboa, Film, web-series. Courtesy of the artist.

  • Meet Juan(ito) Doe 2017, Ricardo Gamboa, Theater company press photo. Courtesy of the artist.

  • Photo of The Hoodoisie 2017, Ricardo Gamboa, Performance intervention. Courtesy of the artist.

  • Still from BRUJOS 2017, Ricardo Gamboa, Film still. Courtesy of the artist.

  • BRUJOS (Still) 2017, Ricardo Gamboa, Film, web-series. Courtesy of the artist.

  • BRUJOS (Still) 2017, Ricardo Gamboa, Film, web-series. Courtesy of the artist.

  • BRUJOS (Still) 2017, Ricardo Gamboa, Film, web-series. Courtesy of the artist.