About the Artist
Michael Espinoza is a non-binary, multi-racial, multi-disciplinary artist whose work embodies and embraces the undone artistic practices of Queer Ancestors lost to persecution, disease, fatal sadness, and closets. Their current practice utilizes embroidery, quilting, digital media, sculpture, and photography to explore sex and sexuality, intersectional identities, intimacy, the body, and contact with the dead. They have previously exhibited live performance, site-specific installation, and video. Their work can be found in public art collections, digital spaces, domestic and international group shows, and the many spaces intended for queer joy. Michael is a current artist in residence at the Tom of Finland Foundation in Los Angeles; they live and work in Portland, OR.
From the ArtistMy experience of queerness is miraculous, varied, connecting, and complicated. With recent bodies of work I am focusing on some of the tensions that arise as a consequence of living in an intersectional body: tensions between showing and hiding, material and representation, seeing and not seeing, feeling and perceiving, and indeed between vitality and death…
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About Instant GratificationThis body of work materialized over the course of 2 years as the artist explored various aspects of their relationship to intimacy, queerness, solidarity, sexuality, and love. As a group these works act as a confessional diary of the many intersecting lives of queer people experiencing joy. There are also works in this group that complicate the realities of queer joy by exposing the forlornness of empty beds…
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Gallery Guide
Aftermath Polaroid IV (Jonathan & Sunshine)
2024 polaroid 600, cotton embroidery
5"x5" in a 9"x9" frame
Aftermath Polaroid III (Jonathan & Sunshine)
2023 i-type polaroid, cotton embroidery
5"x5" in a 9"x9" frame
Jonathan Polaroid Diptych (Jonathan's Closet)
2023 polaroid i-type & cotton embroidery
5"x8" in a 12.25"x14.5" frame
Molly Polaroid Diptych (Self Portrait with Molly)
2023 i-type polaroid, cotton embroidery
5"x8" in a 12.25"x14.5" frame
Rob Polaroid Diptych
2024 i-type polaroid, polaroid 600, cotton embroidery
5"x8" in a 12.25"x14.5" frame