Meet the Artist

Isidro Pérez García (aka ChiloTe) is a borderless artist from Santa Ana, CA and Atotonilco El Grande, Hidalgo, México. He uses various artistic media in his artwork, drawing on his perspective as a formerly undocumented migrant and a campesino urbano. After more than twenty years living undocumented in the US, he received his US residency and quit his job in a furniture-making factory to pursue his BFA from CalArts and his MFA from UCSD. His thesis artwork was awarded the David Antin Prize from UCSD and the Graduating Artist Award from ICA San Diego. He was recently named a California Arts Council, Established Artists Fellow grantee, and his work with maguey plants was featured in a special project with the US Library of Congress. His artwork has been shown at The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture, ICA San Diego, and the University of Virginia, among others. 

Meet the Curator

 

Erika Hirugami, MA, MAAB, MPhil. 

First-generation transnational Japanese Mexican immigrant, formerly undocumented. 

Hirugami holds an MA in Art Business from the Sotheby’s Institute of Art, in conjunction with the Drucker School of Management and Getty Leadership Institute at Claremont Graduate University. As well as an MA and an MPhil. in Chicanx Studies from UCLA. She also holds BAs from UCLA in the fields of Art History, Chicano Studies, and Mexican Studies. Hirugami is currently a teaching fellow and doctoral candidate at UCLA, where she epistemologically braids the aesthetics of undocumentedness to challenge immigration policy and politics. 

Hirugami is the founder and CEO of CuratorLove, Co-founder of the UNDOC+Collective, the ED at AHSC, a Professor at SMC, LAMC, and CGU’s CBMArts, as well as CGU’s School of Arts and Humanities’ MFA Department. She is an Arts for LA Fellow, NALAC NLI Fellow, DAICOR Fellow, and CCI Catalyst. As a Getty and Kress Foundation Fellow, she has developed curatorial statements at museums across Mexico and the United States. After being a Public Art Curator for the Department of Cultural Affairs in the City of Los Angeles, Hirugami became the Curatorial Director for the Ronald McDonald House Charities while leading various commercial galleries. She has curated exhibitions for galleries and museums across the globe, and her written work has been published internationally. 

Currently in Los Angeles, California—the unceded land of the Tongva, Tataviam, Serrano, Kizh, and Chumash peoples. More on Erika Hirugami.