Néstor Pérez-Molière

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My artwork entails a process of self-discovery; a series of confessionals revealing private conflicts; hoping towards catharsis. Through this cathartic process, I hope to depathologize negative feelings so that they can be seen as a source for political action rather than its antithesis. I expose mental health issues like depression, dysmorphia, food addictions, and loneliness: describing their mechanisms, scrutinizing their origins, and illuminating the impossibility of fixing them. 

I work mainly in the photographic realm and I turn my camera onto myself to scrutinize my “undesires” and compare them with my desires. Through many of my works, I toy with the idea of refusing reality and constructing a fantasy, like compositing idealized body parts on top of my own. I show both comfort and discomfort of the body through video performances speaking to commodification of cis-gender, male bodies and marginalization of fat bodies. Using a diaristic approach, I dissect negative relationships with food. By presenting a multiplicity of selves within the same photographic frame, I attempt to show self-compassion by depicting care and intimacy with myself. 

Through my own cathartic process I hope to connect with the viewer’s personal struggles. I continue to expand on this intent by exploring how these ideas manifest themselves within queer communities and racialized bodies, as well as unearthing their sources, whether dictated by society in general, a particular subculture, through primeval instincts, or self-imposed.

Néstor Pérez-Molière was born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and currently resides in The Bronx, New York. His art entails a process of self-discovery; a series of confessionals revealing private conflicts; hoping towards catharsis. Through this cathartic process he hopes to connect with the viewer’s struggles and depathologize negative feelings so that they can be seen as a source for political action rather than its antithesis. Néstor exposes mental health issues like depression, dysmorphia, food addictions, and loneliness: describing their mechanisms, scrutinizing their origins, and illuminating the impossibility of fixing them. His practice mainly takes place in the realm of photography but has also incorporated performance, drawing, video, installation, and intaglio techniques into his works. 

He received an MFA from Hunter College and holds a BSc in Botany. He was part of the Artist in the Marketplace 2017 and Creative Capital’s Taller 2019 mentorship programs, and was included in The Bronx Museum of the Art’s Fourth Biennial. He has exhibited at the Museo de las Américas, the Clemente Soto Vélez, Longwood Gallery, and the Liga de Estudiantes de Artes de San Juan, Puerto Rico. Interested in becoming an educator, he currently teaches digital and darkroom photography, as well as media literacy at the Parsons School of Design, Art Academy of Cincinnati, International Center of Photography, THE POINT CDC, and StrudelMediaLive.