Felipe Baeza (b. 1987, Mexico) received a BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (2009) and an MFA from Yale University (2018). He has presented solo exhibitions in Los Angeles, London, Mexico City, and New York. His work was included in The Milk of Dreams, the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy (2022); Prospect.5: Yesterday We Said Tomorrow, New Orleans, LA (2021); and Desert X, Palm Springs, CA (2021), among other group exhibitions across Europe, South America, and Asia.

Baeza has received awards, commissions, and residencies from Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Getty Research Institute, Joan Mitchell Foundation, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Public Art Fund, NXTHVN, Vilcek Foundation, and the US Latinx Art Forum, among others. His work is held in the public collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, among others. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Ruben Zecena is an interdisciplinary scholar specializing in contemporary Latinx Literature and Culture, which he engages through the lens of Queer of Color Critique, Border Studies, Affect Theory, and Transnational American Studies. He received his PhD in Gender & Women’s Studies, with a minor in Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory, from the University of Arizona (2021). His work is animated by his experiences as a formerly undocumented queer migrant from El Salvador.

He is completing his first monograph, Impossible Possibilities: The Unruly Imaginaries of Queer and Trans Migrants. The book explores the cultural productions of LGBTQ migrants as a blueprint from which to question, critique, and re-imagine the contours of national belonging. It is under advance contract with University of Texas Press. His scholarship appears in WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, Prose Studies, Díalogo, Studies in Spanish & Latin American Cinemas, among others. 

Organized by the Maria Manetti Shrem Art Studio Program and supported by the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis.