Please join us for an artist talk and walk through of Ya nos llevó el Nahual/Babaroga je dosla (the Boogeyman Is here) by featured artists Luz María Sánchez and Maja Ruznic. This exhibition examines monsters; primarily how the monsters of fear and violence make a home in the body. The artists will be discussing the culturally fluid figure of the boogeyman; its threatening specter, and how it is used to infect children with fear and thus subjugates their behavior accordingly. Both artists are engaged with how violence infects both the personal and political bodies of marginalized communities and they will be discussing how persistent exposure to violence is passed on as transgenerational trauma.

Luz Maria Sánchez

Sound and visual artist Luz Maria Sánchez, was born in Guadalajara, Mexico where she studied both music and literature. Through the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Sánchez has focused on the role of sound in art since its inception in the 19th century through its evolution as an independent art practice in the 20th century. Within these studies, Sánchez places emphasis on radiophonic art and examines in her thesis the radio plays of Samuel Beckett, linking them to the sound practices that emerged in the mid-20th century.

As an academic, Sánchez has continued her research in technologized sound, therefore recently she was part of the conference Mapping Sound and Urban Space in the Americas at Cornell University, and in 2015 her book “Technological Epiphanies: Samuel Beckett’s Use of Audiovisual Machines” will be published.

Working with both sound and moving images, Sánchez’s pieces are arranged to envelop the subject in a sensorial experience while preserving a feeling of physical immediacy. Her work moves in the political sphere, working with themes like the Mexican diaspora, violence in the Americas, and the failure of the Nation-State.

Maja Ruznic

Maja Ruznic was born in Bosnia and Hercegovina in 1983 and came to the United States as a refugee in 1992.  She currently lives and works in Los Angeles.  Ruznic studied Psychology and Art at UC Berkeley and received her MFA from the California College of the Arts in 2009. Her paintings, drawings and performances explore memory, trauma, and sexuality. 

Ruznic has exhibited in Germany, France, Texas, Puerto Rico, Los Angeles and San Francisco.  Her painting "The Mother of All Evil" was featured on the cover of New American Paintings in 2011 (Pacific Coast Section, Number 97).  Ruznic’s work is included in the Jiminez-Colon Collection (Puerto Rico) and was recently featured in JUXTAPOZ magazine.