Jester Bulnes (b. 2002) is a lens based Mexican and Salvadoran photographer and interdisciplinary artist who works in photography, painting, ceramics, video, and performance. Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, they just recently graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles where they have obtained a BA in Fine Art with a minor in Chicano/a/x Studies.
Bulnes situates queerness* at the forefront of their work. Their use of queerness exists beyond sexuality, but also as an embodiment, impression, and a possible political site for transformation and (re)imagination. Their artistic practice is rooted in duality, parallels, and the in-between as a framework for engaging with different materials, often those with specific histories—historical and personal—as a way to challenge preconceived notions of identity and expand the possibilities to see things beyond a western-colonial binary.
Their work specifically looks at the intersections of culture, identity, and aesthetics enacted through both performance and materiality. Materials function for them as a code for specific/direct marginalized communities. Through the use of abstraction, Bulnes gestures, signifies, and allows for the materials in their work to perform in place of the body. Whether it be through photography, ceramics, painting, installation, sound, or video, their works often reveal the violence inflicted onto queer bodies while interrogating both the physical and spacio-racial positioning expected by brown and black bodies in urban environments.
Slouching, leaning, ducking, crawling, laying down, forced to the ground. What does it mean for non-white bodies of color to occupy space?
Bulnes has exhibited at the New Wight Gallery (Los Angeles, CA) and Room 3557 (Los Angeles, CA).
