Jesus Miguel Avena

biography

Jesus Miguel Avena is a Queer Mestizo painter and ceramicist from Santa Fe, New Mexico. His work navigates the complexity of identity through the lens of Nepantla—the transformative space of in-betweenness rooted in Chicano thought. Drawing on his lived experience as a Mestizo person born in the United States, Avena uses visual storytelling and object-making to examine the internal and external tensions between Indigenuity, colonial histories, and cultural hybridity.

Through paintings and ceramic works that reference everyday objects, Avena highlights layered histories as products of colonial encounters and cultural survival. By reshaping and reimagining these forms, he seeks to honor Indigenous traditions while also emphasizing the hybrid aesthetics from centuries of adaptation, resilience, and resistance.

His figures, forms, and compositions act as conduits for dialogue—between past and present, sacred and mundane, playful and political. They open poetic spaces where erased or marginalized narratives are made visible, and where cultural memory is activated through both visual and tactile experience. His practice becomes a process of reweaving fragments into a language that is at once personal, collective, and deeply rooted in place.

Desenterando plumas y huesos.

(Unearthing Feathers and Bones.),

49 ¾” x 65 ¼”, Oil on panel with

Ceramic Red Earthenware Frame, 2024.

It is currently on view at Salon 8x10, but is not currently for sale.

Tu puedes ser un coyote, mi hijo. (You Can Be a Coyote, My Son.), 31 ¼” x 55”, Oil on panel with Ceramic Red Earthenware Frames, 2023. It was showing at the Albuquerque Sunport Airport.

Priced at $7,615

Maricon. (Faggot.), 51” x 62”, Oil on canvas with Ceramic Red Earthenware Frame and kitchen curtains, 2023.

It is currently on view at Salon 8x10. Priced at $8,600