The Department of Art Vising Artist Program is proud to welcome Clare Rojas, a magic realist artist with a talent for abstraction whose visual language is rooted in Peruvian folklore and Californian ecofeminism.
Clare Rojas is a painter inspired by wildlife, climate, and literature. She moves freely between dense figurative scenes and minimal, abstract compositions where metaphor, symbology, and fantastical imagery link the past and present, the mystical and mundane. Her compositions are infused with animistic themes, revealing a deep engagement with the mythology of her Peruvian ancestry. Birds, witches, and the forces of nature frequently appear as protagonists in Rojas’ enchanted tableaus.
Rojas (b. 1976, Columbus, OH) is in the permanent collections of MoMA New York; SFMOMA; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco; Orange County Museum of Art, CA; San Jose Museum of Art, CA; Berkeley Art Museum, CA; Smart Museum, University of Chicago; and the Columbus Museum of Art, OH, among others. She has been awarded grants and residencies including Artadia, Eureka Fellowship, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, Joan Mitchell Foundation, and the Headlands Center for the Arts. In 2024, Rojas is the subject of a solo exhibition at the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, Charlotte, North Carolina. She has enjoyed previous solo exhibitions MCA Chicago; Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, MA; Savannah College of Art and Design, GA; Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita, KS; Knoxville Museum of Art, TN; Belkin Satellite, Vancouver; CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco. She has a BFA in printmaking from Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA in painting from School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
[Pictured above: Artist Clare Rojas and her work Bathing in the Misty Rainbow (2024).]
