✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* :･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧
My practice blends painting and photography with references to my Cuban-Mexican heritage, exploring home, indigeneity, and self-concept. Inspired by Chicanx, Cuban, and Zapotec cultural practices, I construct layered narratives through imagery, textiles, and stained glass. Drawing from Indigenous semiotics, I treat symbols, patterns, and materials as an embedded language—an evolving visual lexicon that reflects diasporic and gender-variant experiences.
Layering is both a conceptual and physical process—images fold into themselves, materials accumulate, and meanings shift over time. Some works remain in motion, activated by natural forces, mirroring the fluidity of identity and memory.
My work is influenced by Rasquachismo, a Chicano art movement embodying resilience and resistance in the face of adversity, and Ma, the Japanese concept of intervals in time, space, and being. As a brown artist in the U.S. South, I explore multicultural aesthetics as a site of both challenge and celebration.
Through OpenMFA, I expand my engagement with accessibility in arts education, developing collaborative programming that prioritizes communal knowledge-sharing. As a core member of Kitchen Table Puppets + Press, I extend my interest in storytelling through printmaking, performance, and puppetry, creating spaces for marginalized communities to process our social and political landscape and find empowerment. Both my solo and collective work exist in transformation—shaped by movement, dialogue, and exchange.
:* :･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ
Sol Diaz-Peña (he/they) is a Houston-based artist and community organizer whose work explores identity, memory, and collective storytelling. They have exhibited at Lawndale Art Center, Blaffer Art Museum, Project Row Houses, and other venues throughout their hometown. Diaz-Peña has held residencies at Lawndale Art Center (Houston, TX), the Artists’ Literacy Institute (New York, NY), and Project Row Houses (Houston, TX). Their work will be featured in New American Paintings No. 174. In 2024, they received the Arts and Media Award from the Houston Transgender Unity Committee.
A co-organizer of OpenMFA since 2022, Diaz-Peña helped secure the collective’s residency at Asia Society Texas Center and its participation in the 2024 Texas Biennial. In 2025, they received The Idea Fund award for their project "Absurd Classroom". They are also a core member of Kitchen Table Puppets + Press and will be touring "Recipes of Resistance" in Spring 2025 in partnership with ACLU Texas.
Diaz-Peña holds a B.A. in Humanities with a concentration in Critical Race Studies from the University of Houston–Downtown.
✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* :･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧
✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* :･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧
Thank you!