Emilio Rojas is a multidisciplinary artist working primarily with the body in performance, using video, photography, installation, public interventions, and sculpture. He holds an M.F.A. in Performance from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a B.F.A. in Film from Emily Carr University in Vancouver, Canada. As a queer, Latinx immigrant with Indigenous heritage, it is essential to his practice to engage in the postcolonial ethical imperative to uncover, investigate, and make visible and audible undervalued or disparaged sites of knowledge, narratives, and individuals. He utilizes his body in a political and critical way, as an instrument to unearth removed traumas, embodied forms of decolonization, migration, and poetics of space. His research-based practice is heavily influenced by queer and feminist archives, border politics, botanical colonialism, and defaced monuments.
His work has been exhibited in exhibitions and festivals in the U.S., Mexico, Canada, Japan, Austria, England, Greece, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Holland, Colombia, and Australia, as well as institutions such as The Art Institute and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Ex-Teresa Arte Actual Museum and Museo Tamayo in Mexico City, The Vancouver Art Gallery, The Surrey Art Gallery, The DePaul Art Museum, SECCA, the Syracuse University Museum of Art, The Johnson Museum of Art and The Botin Foundation. From 2019-2022 Rojas was a Visiting Artist in Residency in the Theater and Performance Department at Bard College in New York. He has taught in the M.F.A. programs at Parsons the New School and the low-res M.F.A. programs at PNCA in Portland, Oregon, and University of the Arts, in Philadelphia. He is currently a visiting full-time professor at Cornell University in the School of Art, Architecture and Planning. His a traveling survey exhibition Tracing A Wound Through My Body accompanied with a bilingual catalogue, is currently exhibited in its third iteration at the Usdan Gallery at Bennington College in Vermont, to continue at SECCA, North Carolina, and Artspace, New Heaven.
Emilio Rojas es un artista interdisciplinario que trabaja principalmente con el cuerpo en el arte del performance, utilizando el vídeo, la fotografía, las intervenciones publicas, la escultura y la instalación. Curso la maestría en artes de performance en el School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) y la licenciatura en la Universidad de Arte y Diseño Emily Carr en Canada, en la especialidad de cine, vídeo y multimedia. Su práctica se involucra en el imperativo ético postcolonial de descubrir, investigar y hacer visibles y audibles los sitios subvalorados o menospreciados del conocimiento, las narrativas y los individuos. Utiliza su cuerpo de manera política y crítica, como instrumento para desenterrar traumas pasados, formas encarnadas de descolonización, migración y poética del espacio. Su practica basada en la investigación esta influenciada por archivos feministas y queer, las políticas fronterizas, el colonialismo botánico y la destrucción de monumentos como protesta. Ademas de su practica artística, Rojas es traductor, activista comunitario y facilitador anti-opresión con jóvenes queer, migrantes y refugiados.
Su obra se ha mostrado en Estados Unidos, México, Canadá, Japón, Austria, Inglaterra, Grecia, Francia, Alemania, Italia, España, Holanda, Colombia, y Australia. Tambien ha mostrado su obra en Instituciones como Art Institute of Chicago, el Museo de Arte Contemporaneo en Chicago, Ex-Teresa Arte Actual y el Museo Tamayo en la Cuidad de Mexico, Vancouver Art Gallery, Surrey Art Gallery, DePaul Art Museum, y la Foundation Botin. Su obra es representada por Jose de la Fuente en España , y Gallleriapiu en Italia. Participó en la 54ª Bienal de Venecia como parte del Pirate Camp: Stateless Pavilion, un programa de residencias para jóvenes artistas internacionales. Actualmente vive en Nueva York, donde es profesor de en la Universidad de Cornell.