Luis Vasquez La Roche

Luis Vasquez La Roche is an artist and educator that resides between Trinidad and Tobago and Virginia. They hold an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. Their practice is interested in aspects of the transatlantic slave trade that repeat themselves in varying ways in the present. Even though the slave trade dehumanised millions of Black people, with the consequence of continuing to do so in the present, we can find hope, resistance, and resilience. An essential part of the research is an inquiry regarding material. They employ these materials to articulate aspects of race, identity, culture, politics, and spirituality. These works usually take shape as performances, sculptures or videos.

They have exhibited work and performed in institutions such as Field Projects (NY), Deakin University (Australia), La Vulcanizadora (Colombia), Black Ground (Colombia), Second Street Gallery (VA), International Development Bank (DC), Alice Yard (Trinidad and Tobago), University of Chicago (IL), LACE (CA), AIR Gallery (NY), Fresh Milk (Barbados), The Carr Center (MI), the ICA (VA) and Documenta 15 in Germany. They were selected for OAZO AIR in The Netherlands (2013), Beta Local’s Itinerant Seminar in Puerto Rico (2016), Mare Residency in Puerto Rico (2021), Mar de Islas performance encounter in Puerto Rico (2021), Visible Records Airstream in Virginia (2022) and an upcoming residency at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts (2023). They were the recipient of the Fulbright scholarship in 2018.

Areas of Specialty:

• Performance
• Video
• Video Performance
• Afrofuturism
• Sculpture
• Caribbean, Slave trade, Postcolonial, Race, Blackness, Colonialism, Palm Oil, Cotton, Trinidad, Monuments, Yoruba, Carnival, Ritual