Alva Mooses is a multidisciplinary artist and educator based in New York City. She researches colonized landscapes, religious icons, and socio-political histories. In her work, ceramic globe stands devoid of their worlds make reference to lost or potential typographies and topographies, conveying strata of bodies in transformation. She makes her work from geological materials such as volcanic stones, rammed earth, clay, and cast concrete to build immersive installations that honor historical and geographical memory. Mooses weaves together her personal and familial experiences of the U.S./Mexico border with cultural references and symbols. For example, the Virgin San Juan de los Lagos is transformed into a volcano cast in silver, bringing into question the history of colonial interest in precious metals that drove the destruction of silver and gold in pre-Columbian artifacts––many of which were melted down into Catholic paraphernalia. In There’s Always Sign/ You Enter Dancing, cement cast forms of sandals represent objects one frequently encounters at the border such as shoes manipulated to disguise traces of footprints. This is another example of how notions of belonging and mestizaje in American society are reflected.
Alva received her BFA from The Cooper Union and her MFA from Yale University. Recent exhibitions include: Buen Vivir/Vivir Bien at the Mexic-Arte Museum (Austin, Texas), Retrato de un Paisaje at Museo Sívori (Buenos Aires, Argentina), A Day’s Dust at Studio17 (Stavanger, Norway), and Internalized Borders at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (NYC), Grupo <11> Instituto Cervantes (NYC), Portrait of a Landscape at the Shirley Fiterman Art Center (NYC). She has completed residencies at The University of Chicago, Columbia College, Tou Trykk in Stavanger, Norway, MAG in Saltillo, Mexico, the Davidoff Art Initiative in the Dominican Republic, and Casa Wabi, Oaxaca, Mexico. Alva is a recipient of a Yale University Schoelkopf Traveling Fellowship, the Rema Hort Mann Community Engagement Grant and UChicago Arts Grant and a 2019 Socrates Sculpture Park Fellowship. She is currently a resident artist at the Center for Book Arts in NYC.
Since 2004, Alva has organized community art initiatives and collaborations in Mexico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, El Salvador, and Argentina. Alva is a member of the editorial board for Latinx Spaces, a media platform and co-founder and director of LAZO. She currently teaches Sculpture at The Cooper Union.
