RAVEN
JUAREZ
biography
Born and based in Seattle, Raven Juarez is a contemporary native artist, teacher, and presenter.
Juarez attended Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NY and spent a year abroad in Florence, Italy, to study painting, drawing, print-making as well as Italian art and film history. She graduated in 2013 with a BA in the liberal arts, with concentrations in Child Psychology/Development and Visual Arts. Raven’s work is characterized by intricate designs blending the abstract into symbolic meaning to tell her stories. Created in a process Raven describes as “conversations with herself”, her pieces offer a glimpse into her subconscious and conscious wantings, wonderings, memories, and dreams.
In 2015, her first solo exhibition, Don't Touch, was in Brooklyn, NY, at The One Well in Greenpoint.
Since returning to the Pacific North West, Juarez's recent work has been shown in Tacoma and Seattle, WA, notable shows including;
Familiar Place, Solo Show at Native Action Network headquarters, 2023
Bloodlines, curated by Tracy Rector at Bridge Productions, 2016
Protect The Sacred; Native Artists for Standing Rock, curated by Asia Tail at Spaceworks Gallery, 2017
Moon Moan, presented by Asia Tail and Raven Juarez at 950 Gallery, 2018
yəhaw̓, curated by Tracy Rector, Asia Tail, Satpreet Kahlon at ARTS at King Street Station, 2019
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statement
I use my work to talk to myself, to untangle intangible ideas, and find truth in experiences that once left me feeling confused, or unseen, or out of place. The stories I tell myself, the memories I relive, the dreams I work back into reality, have become my identity. As a mixed-race young woman of indigenous heritage in America today, feeling truth in my identity is a sacred gift to myself. I believe in the unifying power of symbolic storytelling, and by offering vulnerable and intimate perspectives of my own experience, I hope to speak to the softest and buried truths of my audiences. In words unspoken, my stories illuminate the intrinsic connections we share as coinhabitants of the physical world and the ties between the private worlds we each hold within.
