Marcel Pardo Ariza is a trans non-binary visual artist, curator, and cultural worker. Their work explores the relationship of representation, intergenerational kinship, and queerness through constructed photographs and site-specific installations. Through staging and collaboration, Ariza assembles sets as sites of possibility—where stories can be (re)built and alternative and attainable present and future narratives can be realized. Ariza engages a different set of aesthetic concerns post-camera, pushing back against the often rigid and arbitrary constraints predetermined by the discourse of photography. With playful curiosity, they approach the history and materiality of photography as fluid aspects of identity in constant need of deconstruction. Ariza’s practice is invested in creating long term interdisciplinary collaborations and opportunities that are non-hierarchical and equitable.

Ariza (b. 1991, Bogotá, Colombia) received their MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and is the recipient of various awards including a 2022 SECA (Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art) Art Award; 2020 San Francisco Artadia Award; 2018-2019 Alternative Exposure Award; 2017 Tosa Studio Award; and a 2015 Murphy & Cadogan Contemporary Art Award. Their work has been exhibited at venues including the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, AR; Palm Springs Art Museum in Palm Springs, CA; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SFMOMA, KADIST, Southern Exposure, SOMArts, San José Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco Arts Commission Galleries, CULT exhibitions, and the Luggage Store Gallery all located in the San Francisco Bay Area; and OCHI in Los Angeles, CA. They have been a visiting artist at various institutions including CCA, SFAI, Stanford, UCSF, Harvard University, California State University Monterey Bay, San José State University, Mills College, UC Berkeley, and the San José Museum of Art. Ariza currently lives and works in Oakland, CA where they co-founded Art Handlxrs*, a group dedicated to the support and growth of BIPOC, queer, non-binary, and trans people, and womxn* in the professional arts industry as preparators, art handlxrs, technicians, fabricators, and other industry support roles, and is also a member of Minnesota Project Studios and the Emeryville Artists Coop.