It Was Only a Dream
Inspired by his experience growing up undocumented in the Washington, DC, area (locally referred to as the DMV) amid the sensationalization of organized crime in the early 2000s, Reyes’s new body of work teases at the blurred lines between Chicano masculinity, criminality, and cultural identity.
Abstracting images from his family archive and layering them with found Chicano relics, Reyes invites viewers into a geometric, pixelated dreamscape reminiscent of his boyhood. Through sculpture, installation, and prints on fabric, Reyes renders the complicated beauty of Mexican American identity and ideals, interrogating the conditions that have come to define them.
Situated in the haze of memory and media, It Was Only a Dream reflects the ways in which projection can warp perceptions and how nostalgia can distort the past.
An artist-led exhibition walkthrough will be held on Saturday, June 8, 3pm. Link to register here.
About the artist
Edgar Reyes (b. Guadalajara, Mexico) is a multimedia artist and educator based in Baltimore, MD, and the Washington, DC, area. Reyes’s work invites viewers to think about the people, places, and connections they carry with them. His practice draws on the specifics of his own life, and reflections of shared experiences of resettlement and migration. Through his art making he explores his family’s Mexican and Indigenous roots.
Reyes earned his MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD, and has taught at nonprofit organizations, schools, universities, and museums. His work has been prominently featured in large-scale public installations, including Sueños (2017), a two-part piece featuring a monumental light box and banners, displayed during Light City Baltimore, and Xochitl (2021), vivid, abstract patterns installed in shop windows in Rockville, MD, as part of VisArts’ Make It Visible project.
Recent honors include being a Janet & Walter Sondheim Art Prize semifinalist (2024, 2021), Rubys Artist Grant recipient (2021), Keyholder Resident Artist at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center (2021), and Bresler Resident Artist at VisArts (2021). Reyes is a 2022–2024 Hamiltonian Artists fellow.
Available works
Artist reception
Saturday, May 25, 5–7pm
May 18–June 22, 2024
Thursday–Saturday, 11–6pm
Hamiltonian Artists
1353 U Street NW
Washington, DC 20009
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Programs
Artist walkthrough
Saturday, June 8, 3pm
Info