UA Talk by Xavier Robles Armas

UA Talk (English) by Xavier Robles Armas.

Counter-mappings: place belonging and self making in the art of Xavier Robles Armas

Artist and Curator Xavier Robles Armas will walk us through the evolution of his artistic practice where he relies on the notions of counter/mapping as a way tell a new queer narrative around belonging and making sense of place. Most recently he has leaned into the spiritual as a way to ask questions around becoming a landscape and finding meaning in the light.

Xavier Robles Armas (b.1991 Zacatecas, Mexico), is a multidisciplinary artist and curator, based in Queens, NY. With a background in architectural studies he looks at the ways in which Mexican migration has shaped space throughout the United States in turn affecting one’s psychological understanding of the self. By working with ceramics, metal and self-portraiture he turns to the tactile, the earthly, the symbolic, the holy, the archaic and the sensual as points of entropy into one self. How does one become a place? What does it mean to feel like a foreigner in your own country? My work draws from embodied research based practices on how Latinx communities make sense of place. His research focuses on culturally specific leisurely practices, affect theory, philosophies of becoming, and Mexican-American literature.