Lupe Galvan

Born in 1981, I grew up in rural Idaho among the farm lands of the Snake River valley, the historic land of the Shoshone people. I learned to speak English at age 7 or so – however this would remain with me until age 18. I earned my BFA in Illustration from Boise State in 2006 and an MFA from The New York Academy of Art in 2009.

My art stems from my experiences of being of mixed race Hispano-Indigenous and an ESL person growing up in dominant culture geography. The isolation of the area where I grew up provided a binary opposition of preservation of traditional cultural practices while simultaneously creating more distance between dominant culture and myself.

The land itself became incredibly important and spiritually linked in my upbringing and it continues to be a subject in my work. The liminal experiences have many times been the center of dialogue in my work.