A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
April 20 - May 19, 2024

Reyes presents a “maximalist constellation of memory” by juxtaposing family archive materials with paintings and multimedia projections in an installation space reminiscent of, but not identical to, their family’s domestic interiors. Central to the exhibition is a short film that intertwines the border crossings of Reyes’s grandmother Anita during the Salvadoran Civil War and the queer dating life of Reyes’s alter-ego, Griselda. Griselda, a part-narrator, part-drag-persona, and part-survival-strategy, allows Reyes to challenge the expectations placed on queer Latinx artists while acknowledging the complexities of self-formation. The exhibition includes new paintings that recreate family photographs, a vitrine of childhood teeth parodying museal presentation, screens alternating between home videos and simulated archival footage, and blue-green walls evoking Reyes’s family’s past spaces in El Salvador. Through these elements, Reyes transforms preservation into mythmaking, inviting guests to reflect on their own notions of selfhood.
–Connor Spencer

curated by Peter Albano
Real Art Ways
July 18 - October 17, 2024

I only found you when I stopped looking, Reyes’s first solo show in Connecticut, features short films, familial ephemera, and a new body of paintings that humorously explore themes of self-formation, reparative representation, and archival preservation. I only found you when I stopped looking serves as a thoughtful response to Reyes’s previous show, Did you have a hard time finding me? at A.I.R. Gallery. The titles draw inspiration from Yuri Herrera’s book, Signs Preceding the End of the World.

Portals curated by Tracy Fenix
The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center
October 23 - December 12, 2024

2023
LED LCD monitors in black wooden boxes, black and white digitized Hi-8 tapes, continuous loop, no sound

Reyes is an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker who transforms familial and generational narratives through documentation and fictional portrayals, often rooted in themes of home, diasporic longing, and performative self-depiction. In presenting early digitized works, Reyes reveals portals to experiences of birth, youth, and the intensity of self-narrated public gaze.
-Tracy Fenix