Juan Herrera is an artist whose practice encompasses video, photography, writing, performance, and installations. As a queer bilingual/bicultural individual, he is invested in issues of sexual and cultural identity. His work often makes reference to Latin American and/or LatinX present-day and historical issues entwined with his personal experiences.

He holds an MA in Spanish from University of Iowa, an MA in Visual and Critical Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), and an MFA in Photography + Media with a specialization in Integrated Media at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). At CalArts, he was the 2019-2020 Media and Journalism Fellow for Arts in a Changing America and one of the two co-coordinators of the 2020-2021 Paul Brach Visiting Artist Lecture Series. 


Imaginarios de la Identidad (Imaginaries of Identity) is a series of large-scale photomontages of Venezuelan circulated paper currency, assembled with documentary reportage photography of the nation’s contemporary history. I used images sourced from the web-based publications that could not be published in Venezuelan newspapers due to censorship of the printed press.

These 6-foot tall photomontages are high-resolution scanned currency that contain intaglio-engraved portraits of historically important Venezuelan figures in dialogue with photojournalistic coverage of the oppressing present of the country: hyperinflation, political conflict, censorship, struggles with COVID-19, LGBTQ rights, and social collapse.

In this ongoing series, I use reportage images of Venezuelan contemporary history and the nationalistic narratives that are promoted through the currency to question the mechanisms of formation of historical narratives. These paper-based devices are essential to historical narratives and utilize (or forget) the past and/or present political situation of nations.

The photojournalistic images I use illustrate the racial, socioeconomic and historical dynamics of different stakeholders of the Venezuelan identity. With this gesture, I imprint these complexities back into the currency, materializing it in digital printmaking similar to that used to make currency.

Let Me Be Your Tropical Fetish & Still Life Of A Tropical Fetish are photography-based performative reinterpretations of the Socratic allegory of the block of wax applied to the practice of cultural stereotyping of the male Latino identity/body. Pencil de Placeres Suspendidos is an installation of 35 tropical fruits, soy wax, and cotton rope- a homage to the lost garden.