Ramsés Noriega | De Sonora a Los Ángeles

Marc Selwyn Fine Art is pleased to present Ramsés Noriega: De Sonora a Los Ángeles, opening January 29th at our Camden Annex. The exhibition includes works on paper produced between 1968 and 1989, tracing more than two decades of artistic development by the artist. Considered an early pioneer of the Chicano Art Movement, Ramsés Noriega has cultivated an artistic practice over a six-decade career that explores the many dualities of his lived experience as a Mexican American. Born in 1944 in Caborca, Sonora, Mexico, Noriega immigrated to the United States in the 1950s, where he encountered the systemic mistreatment and lack of opportunity that had previously driven his family back to Mexico. As a teenager, he worked as a migrant farm worker while balancing family responsibilities, education, and student activism—experiences that would profoundly shape his artistic and political consciousness. Noriega was a co-organizer of the 1970 Chicano Moratorium march in East Los Angeles, one of the largest Mexican American anti-war demonstrations in US history, with an estimated 30,000 participants, organized in response to the disproportionate number of Mexican Americans drafted and killed or injured in Vietnam. The works on paper presented in this exhibition span formative years in Noriega’s art practice. Often employing caricature, distortion, and symbolic imagery to articulate frustration, anxiety, and resistance, the work reflects the artist’s inner struggles and the broader political realities facing black and brown individuals in the United States.