Justin Favela Visiting Artist and Community Artmaking

As part of its summer celebration of the influence of lowriders on contemporary art, the New Mexico Museum of Art welcomes innovative contemporary artist Justin Favela as its artist-in-residence. Favela will create a half-scale, three-dimensional, piñata-style lowrider to suspend from the ceiling of the museum’s exhibition Con Cariño: Artists Inspired by Lowriders, joining two of his smaller sculptures already on view. Visitors of all ages are invited to collaborate with Justin to create this unique made-in-New-Mexico paper lowrider!

The lowrider the artist will create at the museum is part of his ongoing interest in how vehicles are part of the popular imagination. In previous work, he has explored the iconic role of cars and trucks in celebrity tragedy and spectacle. Favela also created a life-sized Impala for a 2014 exhibition at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, highlighting Chicano culture in the South and bringing pop culture into a high-culture institution. In New Mexico, as part of a collaborative artmaking project in the context of an exhibition celebrating lowriders, his sculptural lowrider will assert the vibrancy of Chicano culture’s contributions to American art and celebrate the lowrider as an artistic and cultural icon. 

Workshop Hours:

Friday, July 8: 2:00-4:00 pm

Saturday, July 9: 10:00 am-1:00 pm and 2:00-4:00 pm

Sunday, July 10: 1:00 to 3:30 pm, followed by a procession with the completed lowrider at 4:00