Artist Talk with Alejandro Macías: A Land That Remembers

On January 17, 516 ARTS was pleased to host an artist talk with Alejandro Macías, whose multidisciplinary practice moves across painting, drawing, and video to examine questions of identity, migration, and belonging. This conversation offered an opportunity to engage more deeply with the ideas and lived experiences that shape his work on view in The Armor We Wear, and to hear directly from the artist about the processes—both material and conceptual—behind his practice.

Macías’s work is rooted in personal history along the U.S.–Mexico border, while remaining attentive to broader social and political conditions, considering how systems of power are felt in everyday life. Memory, celebration, joy and grief surface throughout his work, often carried by symbols and motifs from a Chicano visual lexicon. Moving between varied materials like acrylic, oil, graphite and found objects in any single work, Macías creates space for complexity and contradiction, inviting viewers to sit with what is unresolved.

In this artist talk, Macías spoke about the questions guiding his work and the ways he thinks through making as a form of inquiry. He also discussed his use of materials, the role of storytelling and research in his process, and how his work negotiates visibility and care within institutional contexts. The conversation also touched on how art can function as a site of reflection and resistance—holding personal experience alongside collective histories.

The talk was facilitated by 516 ARTS Curator Olivia Amaya Ortiz, who has worked closely with the artist throughout the development of the exhibition. Rather than a formal lecture, this program was structured as a dialogue, allowing space for Macías to expand on his ideas while remaining responsive to the conversation. A Q&A followed, inviting audience members into the exchange.