Biography

Interdisciplinary artist, writer, curator, and Fulbright scholar. Ph.D, Duke University. MFA, University of Iowa. Born In Havana, Cuba. Arrived to the United States in 1980 via the Mariel Boatlift.

Co-Executive Director, Howard University Gallery of Art and Executive curator of Arte Nuevo InteractivA (2001-2014), Ferrera-Balanquet has organized numerous art, video and new media exhibitions. Among them are Sensorial Africana Superrealities: Five Diaspora Contemporary Artists, A&A AT HILLYER, Washington, DC; Genesis: The African American Experience in Art. The Ronald W. and Patricia Turner African American Collection, Howard University Gallery of Art; Africana Hemispheric Performance, Actions, Socially Public Participations, Rituals, and Ceremonies, Center for Afrofuturist Studies, Iowa City, Iowa, USA; Indigeneity | Decoloniality | @rt, Jameson Gallery, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA; Videos That Unmask, Test and Invade the Colonial System, Program I, Video In, Vancouver B.C., Canada, 1992; Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano in Iowa II, International Festival and Conference, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, 1986.

Author of Aestesis Decolonial Transmoderna Latinx_MX, (2019), CDMX-Merida, Mexico; editor of Andar Erotico Decolonial (2015), Ediciones del Signo, Buenos Aires, Argentina.  His writings have appeared in Narrating Our Histories: Selections from a dialogue among Queer Media Artists From the African Diaspora, Sisters in the Life: A History of African American Lesbian Media-Making, Yvonne Welbon and Alexandra Juhasz, editors, Duke University Press, Durham, North Carolina, USA. Imaginarios y Estrategias Decoloniales, Estudios Artísticos: revista de investigación creadora, Bogota, Colombia; Decolonial AestheSis at the 11th Havana Biennial, Decolonial AestheSis, Raul Moarquech Ferrera-Balanquet and Miguel Rojas-Sotelo,Social Text Journal / Periscope, New York, USA;  Merida T’Ho_MX: Exploring Locative Media in a Latino Territory, Public No. 40,Toronto, Canada; Caribbean InTransit, No 4, Virginia, USA; Bienal de La Habana Para leer, Universitat De Valencia, Spain; Inter, Art Actuael, No 102, Québec, Canada.

Ferrera-Balanquet artworks, installations, videos, and performances have been exhibited at Decolonial Transborder Art, PAMLA Arts Matter, Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association , UCLA Luskin Conference Center, Los Angeles, California; Haceres Decoloniales, Galeria ASAB, Bogota, Colombia; Decolonizing The “Cold” War”, BE.BOP 2013 Black Europe Body Politics, Ballhaus Naunynstraße, Berlin, Germany; DysTorpia Media Project, Queens Art Museum, New York;  “Cuba: La Isla Posible”, Centro de Cultura Contemporánea de Barcelona, Spain; MIX New York, Film Anthology, Nueva York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; San Francisco International Gay and Lesbian Film and Video Festival, California.

In addition to a Fulbright Fellowship, Ferrera-Balanquet has been awarded grants from Critical Minded, FONCA, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, US/Mexico Cultural Fund, ANAT-Australia, NEA, and The Lyn Blumenthal Video Foundation.