This exhibition of distinguished artist Juana Alicia features a wide range of works from her artistic career. Many of the works draw their inspiration from literature. While Juana Alicia is best known for her work as a muralist throughout the Bay Area and in Mexico, this exhibition will present Juana Alicia’s most recent illustration project, La X’tabay: The Book of Books (2024), a collaboration with author Tirso González Araiza. Juana Alicia’s two works in the form of codexes reflect the artist’s mastery while also capturing elements of Latin American literary movements found throughout her larger body of work. Cenote de Sueños will feature paintings that address women’s creative power in addressing issues of social justice.

Juana Alicia divides her time between her studios in Berkeley, California and Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico. During four decades of teaching, Juana Alicia founded and directed several educational institutions that supported young artists. She taught at several universities, including the University of California at Davis and Santa Cruz, San Francisco State University, and Stanford University. Retired from academia, she is now engaged in a full-time studio practice.
Juana Alicia
Originally from Detroit, Michigan, Juana Alicia is a multidisciplinary artist who has resided in California since a very young age. For the past two decades she has divided her time between California and Mérida, Yucatán. She studied her master’s degree in fine arts and painting at the San Francisco Art Institute in San Francisco, California. Her work as a muralist, studio painter, sculptor, designer and educator is widely known in the San Francisco Bay Area and although the bulk of her public art work is concentrated in that city, she has also created monumental works in other parts of California, Pennsylvania, as well as in countries such as Nicaragua and Mexico. Some of the public art commissions she has completed include SANARTE at the University of San Francisco Medical Center, SANCTUARY at the San Francisco International Airport and MAESTRAPEACE, the mural at the Women’s Building. She collaborated with Tirso Gonzalez Araiza in the design and creation of the mural GEMELOS, a mural in relief, on the façade of the graphic design building of the Universidad Tecnológica Metropolitana de Mérida, Yucatán. She was awarded the Fulbright/García Robles scholarship and collaborated with the Escuela Superior de Artes de Yucatán in the CENOTE DE SUEÑOS mural project in 2006-07. Her painting and graphic work has been exhibited in different galleries in the United States and Mexico.

More work can be viewed at www.juanaalicia.com.

Curated by Marco Antonio Flores.