Josué Rojas
Artist Josué Rojas is a practicing visual creator and an educator who relishes in learning and teaching the articulation of a potent human language – by using art as a response and celebration, not simply to life's inequities but to its bounty as well.
"I am a Salvadoran-born American Citizen, a Californian, a teacher. My work is informed by my bicultural and bilingual experience. Part of a continuum, my work and personal creative vision contribute to a visual heritage of creative critical consciousness."
Investigations of identity, immigration, culture, and community weave themselves through my creative process. It is my experience that the practice of art making possesses a dialectical quality for both creator and audience. As an artist working within communities and schools (locally and abroad), I am interested in and seek to create artwork and courses that harness the dialectical quality innately found in art –– and place it in the service of the community.
Artist Diego Rivera once wrote, "an artist must be the conscience of his age." I share this view and would add that the artist can spur a critical conscience into the public imagination. If there was ever a time urgently in of need the rousing effect of conscience, and of a positive imagination, it is now.
Artwork Gallery & Reflection Questions
Click on the arrows to view the selected images from Josué's collection.
You can respond to the reflection questions listed below for the image that speaks to you the most.
1. "Cesar & Dolores," ink & watercolor on paper, diptych, each piece: 26 x 40 in, 2024
Reflection Questions:
What feelings do these pieces inspire? What imagery do you see, and how do they connect with Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta?
2. "A Poem for the Dead," altar, Dreams Emerging, Beyond Resilience: Día de Los Muertos 2021, SOMArts Cultural Center.
Dedicated to five Latinx killed by police brutality in the U.S. and Mexico.
-Mario González, 26, killed by suffocation, Alameda, California, April 19, 2021.
-Victoria Salazar, 36, killed by suffocation, Tulum, Mexico, March 27, 2021.
-Sean Monterossa, 22, killed by 5 shots, Vallejo, California, June 4, 2020.
-Angel Zapata Hernández, 24, killed by suffocation, San Diego, California, October 15, 2019.
-Claudia Patricia Gómez González, 20, killed by a shot in the head by a Border Patrol agent, Rio Bravo, Texas, May 23, 2018.
Reflection Questions:
Had you heard of these killings before? How can artwork and altars like this help address the injustices they are reflecting?
3. “8:46*,” altar, Living Legacies: Día de Los Muertos 2020, SOMArts Cultural Center."
(See the poem below to accompany the George Floyd visual artwork above)
Reflection Questions:
How did the murder of George Floyd change things in your community? What have we as a country learned since then?
4. "Angel of the New Revolution,"
Reflection Questions:
What comes to mind when you see the image of a gun being made of a tree limb and pencils? What connections might the artist be trying to make?
5. "Pacha Mama, what makes a new place feel like home?," 30"x42"
Reflection Questions:
How are these images reflecting ideas about "home"? What does home mean to you?
6. "Sacred Potato,"
Reflection Questions:
How does this image make meaning from variations of the word "papa"? Why do some things/entities get worshiped more than others?
7. "Fantastic Animal #5,” acrylic on canvas, 24 x 24 inches, in pandemic, 2020.
Painting and drawing are part of the multidisciplinary weave that I practice to show my illusions and passions, to get closer to the zig-zag of the symbols of creation, those that my ancestors left me in dreams, and to tell truths that sometimes need to be painted. Pencils and liquid paint flowing, like imaginary fish growing in the air, and my hands full of colors, eyes closed, eyes open. That’s my reality reinvented every day.
Reflection Questions:
With the unexpected pairing of images here, what ideas does this painting spark for you? What have you learned from or about your ancestors?
8. "From the River to the Sea," (Is that the title for this one? I'm seeing "Luggage store" in the folder for this one. ;)
Reflection Questions:
9. "Live painting with LoCura Band, 2021,"
Reflection Questions:
Have you seen a live painting before? What can we learn by witnessing art in the stages before it's finished?