JUDE GALLERY







Amor de mis Amores
Juan Arango Palacios 
5.27 - 7.29.22


Amor de Mis Amores is a solo exhibition by Juan Arango Palacios that surveys the tender complexities of queer love and heartbreak through the latin disasporic culture of Cumbia music. Utilizing the vivid, dreamy metaphors of lyrics as a form of research and reference, Arango Palacios creates magical pastel drawings grounded in images of desire, longing, and loss that reveal the realities of love as an individual and communal journey.


Cumbia, a unifying music genre of Latin America originating in Colombia, has unapologetically sung of love and drama for generations. Now, Arango Palacios uses these historically heteronormative lyrics as inspiration to describe their own queer experience, and bridge the gap between love’s idealized perceptions and its painful and joyous truths. 


In Amor de Mis Amores, Arango Palacios presents a collection of ceramic sculptures and drawings that sing of the same elemental motifs beloved in Cumbia. Hearts, flowers, angels, stars of light, and fire, mingle in their visual worlds to create a lilting backdrop for their figures to live: some lost together in warm embrace, and other sitting alone with tears spilling on to their chest. Their sentimental, personal depictions push back against the over sexualization of queerness in order to unfold and embrace its true tender softness. In doing so, Arango Palacios reclaims these symbols of romance as tools to envision a new landscape of love and identity that finally feels like home for all.










Juan Arango Palacios


Juan Arango Palacios (b.1997) is from Pereira, Colombia. A traditional Catholic upbringing was cut short by a series of migrations that Juan's family took seeking a better future. Juan's family moved from Colombia to the American South where Juan’s sense of identity and belonging began to be skewed by their lack of knowledge of the English language, their unfamiliarity with American culture, and their internal struggle with a queer identity.  Juan graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2020, and has developed an interdisciplinary artistic practice exploring drawing, painting, textile-making, and ceramic sculpture.
















JUDE GALLERY

Jude Gallery is woman/POC-led exhibition and project space in Pilsen that supports Chicago’s emerging, contemporary, and BIPOC/queer/trans artists, experimental art formats, and community-centered programming.


By appointment 
629 West Cermak
Unit 240
Chicago IL 
Chicago IL
︎︎︎ Instagram: @jude__chicago
info@judegallerychicago.com
t. 312.451.6695
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