“Juan José Barboza-Gubo has profound and urgent things to say about the relationship between humanity and nature.”- Juror Dexter Wimberly, Independent Curator and Co-Founder, Creative Study.

Juan José Barboza-Gubo is a Peruvian born artist living in Boston. He received his Bachelor’s Degree at Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru and holds MFA degrees in Painting and in Sculpture, both from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Solo exhibitions include: Museum of Contemporary Art, Peru; Memory Museum, Peru; The Museum of Sex, New York; Inter Kultur Foto Art; Instituto Francés de Stuttgart; Museo Colonia Bogota Colombia; Galeria German Kruger Espantoso ICPNA-Peru; The Fitchburg Museum; Praise Shadows art gallery among others. Recent awards of note include the 2019 Fellowship in Photography from the Mass Cultural Council, 2019 Icpna arte contemporaneo second award, 2018 Photolucida Critical Mass: Top 50, 2016 Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Fellowship in Sculpture, 2015 Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Fellowship in Painting, and others. His exhibitions have been reviewed in publications such as The Boston Globe, Artscope Magazine, Artsy, PRI’s The World, The Huffington Post, The Advocate, The Houston Press, El Comercio (Peru), and Lenscratch. Barboza-Gubo currently teaches at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

As a multidisciplinary artist, Barboza-Gubo’s artistic pursuits resemble the search for a mirror in which everyone can reflect. Barboza-Gubo asks questions about the relationship between the self and other, sexuality, the body, nature, and the landscape. Through the artistic process, he seeks to strip away the repressive social constructions of the self and the natural environment. The people, the animals, and the land are the source of his artistic preoccupations, however, as a migrant between Peru and the United States, he works through a lens that questions anthropocentrism in both countries, which historically has served as the justification for other forms of prejudice. Visibility and shadows animate this work, making the dynamics of light both theme and material for sculpture, painting, photography, and sound. Barboza-Gubo’s artistic practice is an offering, a revelation of the complexity and beauty that resides within each of us. It is an attempt to break free from imposed limitations and find a unique voice, a journey that reflects the very essence of the human condition and our interconnectedness with the vast environment that surrounds us.