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Plataforma Raíz Since 2022 has been a collaborative and comprehensive educational program characterized by the creation of workshops, talks, and meetings that promote the professional growth of the migrant and Latino artists community. With a multidisciplinary and critical approach, we look to ensure the cultural progress and diverse representation of Latino communities, their recognition, and economic growth.

Both the creative and educational processes are conducive to all artists as participants are constantly learning and growing. Through this guided process, we explore the possibilities of the artist’s work; specifically, where experimentation and the unpredictable join a constant mediation and confrontation with the work of art.

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Important links:

Building a strong artist portfolio workshop.  

Been accepted to the Fall 2025 Cohort of the Narrative 4 National Schools Network , and Once Upon Our Time Capsule National Educator Network.

  • The program Art of Radical Collaboration Program TRCSTRS 2024.

  • Artshanty Project Board 2023/2024

  • Minneapolis Arts Commission 2024 / Current

  • Crescent Cove. Dragonfly staff. July 2021 / Current

  • Ampersand Families. Photographer for The Minnesota Heart Gallery. 2021 / Current

  • Minnesota State Arts Board. On site Artistic Evaluation. 2024

  • Arts Midwest. Midwest Award for artists with disabilities evaluator. 2023, 2024, 2025

  • Metro Regional Art Council MRAC. Arts Impact Groups and Art Impact for individual Panelists. 2022/2023

  • Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Minnesota. Elementary Art Teacher. February / April 2022

Marco Arte Foco artists residency program and Museum Coordinador.

Canvas Rebel Interview.

2025                                                                  

Minnesota BIPOC Artist Residency 2025
 

I am honored to participate in the Minnesota BIPOC Artist Residency, a space that nurtures creative exploration, community, and healing for BIPOC artists. This residency provides the opportunity to deepen my practice in a supportive environment that balances solitude, collaboration, and renewal.

For this residency, I am developing “A Wandering Wind Born from the Dust,” an immersive multidisciplinary project that critically engages with migration, race, ethnicity, and indigeneity, especially within the context of the Americas and the United States. Using shadows and projections, the work creates a metaphorical and sensory language to represent migrant communities—whose labor and culture shape nations, yet who remain largely invisible in official histories.

This project emerges from my own experience as a Venezuelan immigrant, who fled violence, hunger, and persecution. Like many, I left behind a shadow—a presence that lingers as a testament to displacement, silencing, and fragmentation imposed by systems of oppression. These shadows symbolize enduring presence despite erasure, standing as silent witnesses and resilient marks of stories that refuse to disappear.

The work also reflects on indigeneity, exploring the intersections between the displacement of Indigenous peoples and the marginalization of migrants. Through these shadows—both lost and reclaimed stories—the project offers a poetic and critical lens on how racialized and displaced communities navigate systems that reject them yet bear their unacknowledged imprint.

A Wandering Wind Born from the Dust, was made possible with support from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council (MRAC), which improves arts access for the seven-county metro communities of Minnesota through grants, resources, and advocacy.

#WeAre1924
https://weareuprisers.com/pages/1924

I was selected to participate in #WeAre1924 — a project that remembers, resists, and reclaims.

As a Venezuelan immigrant and artist, being part of this initiative is both personal and deeply political. The 1924 Immigration Act was a moment in U.S. history where discrimination became law—where communities of color were told they didn’t belong. A hundred years later, that message still echoes in policies, systems, and social perceptions.

My presence in this project is an act of resistance. It’s a way of honoring those who came before me and those still navigating borders—physical, cultural, and emotional. The project doesn't just portray immigrants as subjects, but as agents of history, with stories that challenge erasure and invisibility.

As an artist, my work is rooted in memory, migration, and the fragility of identity.  Being part of #WeAre1924 gives me another platform to share that narrative not as a number, but as a face, a name, and a voice.

1924 changed our history. Today, we tell our stories. Today, we transform our future.

Story Stitch Facilitator Training by Green Card Voices.
https://www.greencardvoices.org/story-stitch/

On April 12, I participated in the Story Stitch Facilitator Training by Green Card Voices, an organization that amplifies immigrant voices through first-person storytelling. The training equipped me with tools to create brave spaces for dialogue, foster empathy, and lead meaningful conversations. As a migrant artist, I deeply value storytelling as a way to heal, connect, and transform communities.

Art Shanty Board Member.
2024 - 2025
 

Being a board member of Art Shanty Projects is a meaningful opportunity to support a vibrant, inclusive, and experimental arts community. This unique organization transforms Minnesota’s winter landscapes into interactive artistic environments, making art accessible to the public in unexpected and joyful ways.

 

As a board member, I help shape sustainable and community-centered strategies that empower artists from diverse backgrounds to share their visions in public spaces. I’m especially inspired by the intersections of art, nature, and local community engagement. Serving on this board allows me to advocate for cultural equity, support artistic risk-taking, and champion art as a collective, transformative experience rooted in place, play, and participation.

Documentary:  Avisame cuando llegues a casa.

I am deeply grateful for the incredible reception my documentary on Venezuelan migration has received. Being selected as Best Short Documentary Director at the AltFF Alternative Film Festival is an honor that goes beyond personal recognition; it is a testament to the importance of telling these stories. My goal has always been to create a lasting record of what is happening in Venezuela, to ensure that the struggles, resilience, and voices of those affected are never forgotten. This award motivates me to continue documenting and sharing these realities with the world. Thank you to everyone who has supported this project and believed in its purpose. 

Minneapolis Arts Commission.  Ward 10

https://lims.minneapolismn.gov/boards/arts

Serving on the Minneapolis Arts Commission is both a responsibility and an honor. As a Latinx artist, educator, and immigrant, I recognize the critical importance of representation, especially in civic and cultural spaces that shape policy and opportunities. My presence on the Commission reflects the diverse voices of a community that often goes unheard, yet makes a significant contribution to the city's creative life. I see this role as a platform to advocate for equitable access to funding, visibility, and support for Latinx and BIPOC artists. True cultural development must reflect the people who live it, and I’m committed to making that happen.

Fresh Eye Gallery.

Collaborations 2024-2025.

Fresh Eye Arts is a fine arts program that supports artists with a variety of disabilities. We are a service offered by MSS, a day services provider that serves the Twin Cities Metro area of Minnesota. They provide the opportunity for artists to explore, learn, create, show, and sell their work. Fresh Eye artists are self-driven and are supported in their professional development. 

2024                                                                  

The "Migrant Monuments" project.
 

An artistic proposal that combines photoperformance, the exploration of natural spaces, and the ephemeral intervention of landscapes. It challenges traditional notions of monuments while reflecting on human representation and its relationship with the environment.

Key Elements of the Project
1. Photoperformance in natural spaces:
○ The guided walk invites participants into an intimate dialogue with the landscape, activating a physical and visual interaction with the space.
○ The intervention with reflective pedestals establishes a symbolic and material connection between the human body and nature, transforming the static into the dynamic.

2. Reflective pedestals:
○ The pedestals mirror the surrounding natural environment, creating an optical illusion that makes part of the body "disappear."
○ The human figure is presented as a bust, evoking the aesthetic of classical monuments but with a modern subversion: the context (nature) becomes an integral part of the monument, challenging the idea of permanence and power.

3. Challenge to traditional notions of monuments:
○ The Migrant Monuments are neither static nor imposing; they are ephemeral, mobile, and context-sensitive.
○ They represent the human condition as transitory, interconnected with space, and vulnerable, especially concerning contemporary issues such as migration, climate change, and identity.

4. The human figure and the bust:
○ By presenting individuals as busts, the project foregrounds the relationship between the individual and the collective.
○ It blurs the boundaries between humans and their surroundings, questioning humanity's central role as the absolute protagonist. Social and Poetic Reclamation The project carries a profound social and conceptual component:

● Migration and displacement: The "Migrant Monuments" serve as a metaphor for lives in motion, particularly those forced to leave their places of origin. The fragility and integration with the landscape reflect the experience of adaptation and loss.
● Rethinking public and natural spaces: The work reclaims space as something alive and constantly transforming, rejecting traditional monumentality that seeks to eternalize hierarchies of power.
● Inclusion and participation: By inviting people to walk and interact with the pedestals, the project becomes a shared work of art that encourages reflection on the notions of belonging and community. Significance in Contemporary Art.

This type of project has an impact that goes beyond aesthetics:
● It questions the relationship between the artwork and space, between the ephemeral and the eternal.
● It reflects on how we represent individuals and communities in a world where borders (both physical and symbolic) are constantly renegotiated. In essence, "Migrant Monuments" redefines what it means to commemorate, honor, and represent in a changing world, highlighting impermanence as a force for transformation and resilience.

RED NUMBERS - Números ROJOS.

Performance Action | 2025

Project Description:
Red Numbers is a performance action that uses metallic red number-shaped balloons to reflect on the dehumanization embedded in the statistics of suffering: deaths, disappearances, displacement, debt—numbers that repeat and accumulate until they lose their symbolic weight. The color red, evoking both danger and urgency, becomes a metaphor for spilled blood and overlooked crises.

The action takes place in public space, where the artist interacts with the balloons, allowing these symbolic numbers to float, fall, entangle, and scatter. The lightness and festive appearance of the balloons—objects often linked to celebration—stand in stark contrast to the weight of the data they represent. This visual dissonance invites critical reflection on how numbers can erase the human stories behind them.

Program Context:
This project was created as part of TRCSTR (Transformational Creative Strategies Training), a four-month cohort training program for community artists. The 2024 cohort consisted of eight participants who were supported by individual and collective mentorship from an eight-member advisory group. Together, they worked collaboratively to develop public projects as part of the program. TRCSTR is led by artists and organizers, and centers on building both personal and collective capacity to bring transformational change through creative work. The program provides space to grow and practice skills, build connections, and share food, questions, and ideas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Red Numbers was made possible with support from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council (MRAC), which improves arts access for the seven-county metro communities of Minnesota through grants, resources, and advocacy.

TRCSTR program
Performance
Workshop at Copal
Promo Workshop

Lanesboro Arts BIPOC Artist Residency Program


Lanesboro Arts invites Black, Indigenous, and Persons of Color (BIPOC) artists in Minnesota to apply for the Lanesboro Arts BIPOC Artist Residency Program. This personally tailored residency program offers the opportunity for support and open access to Lanesboro Arts and Lanesboro Area, facilities, personnel, and natural environment.

Lanesboro. MN

February

During the program, progress was made in the editing of the documentary about Venezuelan migration called: Let me know when you get home.

 

 

 

 

 


OPEN TALK at Lanesboro High School 

Creative Fragments:

Multidisciplinary Creations with the Essence of Collage.

Zine Publication with Apex Gallery NY

Interview by my sister María Fernanda Vandersteen.

Build what we hate. Destroy What We Love, an apexart open call exhibition curated by Fabiola R. Delgado.

Online/Printed

North Star Collage #3
https://twincitiescollagecollective.bigcartel.com/product/north-star-collage-3https://twincitiescollagecollective.bigcartel.com/product/north-star-collage-2

I’m honored to have been selected for two consecutive editions of North Star Collage, a publication that celebrates collage and mixed media in Minnesota.

Published by the Twin Cities Collage Collective, both editions —North Star Collage #2 and the more recent North Star Collage #3— showcase the work of dozens of local artists exploring the expressive possibilities of collage, from traditional cut-and-paste to digital and multimedia techniques.

Twin Cities Collage Collective is a community-based organization founded in 2017 by allison anne. It provides an inclusive, welcoming space for people of all creative backgrounds to learn about collage, connect with others, and access resources. In addition to its publications, the collective hosts free public meetups and workshops throughout Minneapolis/Saint Paul. In 2025, they began shifting to a more decentralized model to increase participation and include a broader range of artistic voices.

In North Star Collage #2 (2024), I was featured alongside artists like Jes Reyes, Yasmiene Mabrouk, Kerri Sandve, Christopher Alday, Lyz Wendland, Azania Tripp, and Brado, among many others. Nearly three times the size of the first issue, this edition featured 75 Minnesota-based artists working in collage and mixed media.

Minneapolis College of Art and Design Master of Fine Arts in Visual Studies. Tutor.
https://www.mcad.edu/merit-scholarship-recipients/25%E2%80%9326/graciela-deanda
https://www.instagram.com/gracieladeanda23/

Working with Graciela DeAnda as her MFA thesis mentor at MCAD has been an inspiring and deeply rewarding experience. Her commitment to exploring themes of memory, identity, and migration through interdisciplinary practices demonstrates both emotional depth and conceptual rigor. Graciela’s projects are grounded in community engagement and cultural reflection, blending photography, video, and installation to build powerful narratives. Our weekly meetings have been productive and generative, allowing her to expand her technical skills while refining her message. I’ve seen tremendous growth in her confidence and artistic voice, and I’m excited to witness how her work continues to evolve post-graduation.

2023                                                                  

Building a Strong Portfolio / Creación de portafolio de artistas. Workshop.

6 Sessions | Saturdays: January 21, 28 February 4, 11, 18, 25 | 1-3pm

Join artist Juan Diego Pérez la Cruz as he guides students on creating a portfolio that shows your style and stands out!

https://www.northsuburbanarts.org/blog/portfolio-perez
https://www.northsuburbanarts.org/teen-adult-classes/p/portfolio

04/08      04/15     04/12   04/29

Outdoor photography workshop.  

Four sessions with Latino artists at Dakota County Parks, MN.

Huellas Latinas, Dakota County.MN.

09-2022   05- 2023

New Angle Fellow  
 

A 7-month fellowship that supports underrepresented and emerging documentary filmmakers who are creating their own work and hoping to get to the next step in their filmmaking journey, MN.

Saint Paul Neighborhood Network (SPNN)


https://www.spnn.org/newangle#:~:text=New%20Angle%20Fellows%20is%20a,step%20in%20their%20filmmaking%20journey.

Logline: Uncover the Venezuelan migration crisis through a formal and introspective lens in this poetic and experimental documentary. Witness the resilience of immigrants as their stories are vividly brought to life through a captivating performative interpretation.

Let me know when you get home. ( Avísame cuando llegues a casa).1/7    

Documentary link with captions

September / October       

Artist Residency program, invited by The Pillsbury House +Theatre

ART IN COMMONS / Mike Hoyt, Creative Community Liaison

MN.

04/08      04/15     04/12   04/29

2023 Care For Place Fellowship 
 

The Care for Place fellowship will include a cohort of 10 Minnesotans  that share their stories of how they care for Minnesota’s beautiful natural places in a way that inspires others.

From Venezuela to Minnesota: Nurturing Nature and Inspiration Through the Immigrant Experience

Embracing Nature’s Healing Power Through Loss with Juan Diego Perez la Cruz

Loteria AFROLATINA, for educators.
https://www.csusb.edu/anthropology-museum/exhibitions/previous-exhibitions/afrontalo-2023

 

Being selected for this opportunity as a Spanish Immersion educator in Minnesota is an honor that reaffirms my commitment to culturally responsive teaching. It allows me to access meaningful tools like Lotería Afrolatina to enrich my students’ understanding of Afrolatine identities, histories, and contributions. In a diverse learning environment, these resources foster inclusion, reflection, and critical thinking. As an educator, I see this as a powerful way to broaden my classroom's cultural horizons and affirm underrepresented narratives.

Afrolatinizamos is an initiative led by the California State University San Bernardino Anthropology Museum that provides educational materials centered on Afrolatine communities. One of its core tools is Lotería Afrolatina, a bilingual bingo-style game that highlights Afrolatine people, cultures, and experiences. It’s designed specifically for educators working in nonprofit and educational spaces, offering an engaging and accessible way to introduce students to voices often left out of traditional curricula. Participating in this initiative strengthens my role as a bridge between cultures and lived experiences.

2022                                                                  

02/05

Creation of the educational platform.

Minneapolis / Buenos Aires

Mentors: Juan Diego Pérez la Cruz / Paula Carrella.

09/06 - 10/12

Minneapolis Public Schools.Jonh B. Davis Gallery.

Minneapolis Public Schools. MPS

Hogares temporales y otros un poco permanentes / Temporary homes and others a bit permanent

Duo exhibition : Juan Diego Pérez la Cruz / Lauren Alfaro Núñez.

Curatorial text: Mirella Espino.

10/04

A conversation between Derek Francis, executive director of equity and school climate, and Juan Diego Pérez La Cruz.

10/04

Las Estrellas Dual Language School visit.
Donation of artwork for the school library.

09/15

Latin Artist Portfolio Showcase.   5 artists x 5 projects.

Springboard for the arts. MN.

Alondra M Garza, Hedgiee, Nicolas Jaramillo , Alonzo Pantoja-Patiño, Juan Diego Pérez la Cruz.

07/21 - 08/25

Online group exhibition.

Espacio Proyecto Libertad (@espacioplibertad) • Fotos y videos de Instagram

“El cuerpo sin órganos no hay quien lo consiga, no se puede conseguir, nunca se acaba de acceder a él, es un límite”

Deleuze y Guattari: “¿Cómo hacerse un cuerpo sin órganos?”

Artists: Alejandro Torrealba, Analy Trejo, Enmaly Ramírez, Juan Toro-Diez,Diana Leal, Juan Diego Pérez La Cruz.

Curator: Elizabeth Marín Hernández.

Espacio Proyecto Libertad

Espacio de investigación, difusión y exposición del arte actual venezolano, con base en la ciudad de Mérida. Venezuela.

06/25 - 07/02

Building a strong artist portfolio workshop.  

Two 4 hours in person sessions with Latin artists from Minnesota.

C.L.U.E.S Comunidades Latinas Unidas en Servicio. MN

08/10 - 08/15 - 10/22

Building a strong artist portfolio workshop.  

Three Online sessions with Venezuelan artists.  Festival Hecho en Venezuela.

El Avispero Art, RO.S.CA

11/05     11/12     11/19

ENTRENOS: Artes, cultura y comunidades latines en las ciudades gemelas.

Youtube Video

I’m deeply grateful to have been part of the first Entre Nos Series organized by MRAC. As a Latinx artist and educator, it was incredibly meaningful to witness a bilingual space created with so much care, intention, and community in mind. Sharing Plataforma Raíz alongside other amazing voices like Pamela, Hedgiee, and Kenneth was a powerful reminder of why we do this work. These events responded directly to the needs of our community, and it showed. Thank you to Mirella and everyone who made this happen. I left inspired, and I know this is only the beginning of something bigger.

11/05     11/12     11/19

Outdoor photography workshop.  

Three sessions with Latino artists at Dakota County parks, MN.

Huellas Latinas, Dakota County.MN.

12/09

Limits, Experiences, Experimentations Talk

Special event with k5 and 6-12 visual arts teachers.

M.P.S Minneapolis Public Schools

Edison High School.MN

12/12

Art donation to Las Estrellas Dual Language School library.

Special event with parents and staff.

Las Estrellas Dual Language School.MN

12/09 - 2/15

Escribir con el cuerpo. / Formas de acercarse al territorio.

​​WRITING WITH THE BODY. ​/ WAYS OF APPROACHING THE TERRITORY

A photography group exhibition of 10 new Latino artists,  curated by Juan Diego Perez la Cruz.

Artists:

  1. Eliana Hermosa 

  2. Liliana Sanchez

  3. Juan Diego Pérez la Cruz

  4. Alejandro Pons Juárez

  5. Griselda Araiza Figueroa

  6. Dinorah Martinez

  7. Yari Cabezas-Perusse 

  8. Luisana Méndez

  9. Nohelia Fernández

  10.  Mayra Adán Quiterio

CLUES - Comunidades Latinas Unidas En Servicio .MN

Curator: Juan Diego Pérez la Cruz.

©2022 by JUAN DIEGO PEREZ LA CRUZ. 

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