Alonso Galue (b. 1994) is a Venezuelan-born, Chicago-based artist whose painting, puppetry, and performance intertwine migration, folklore, and mental health. His immersive works, from The Weeping Nation to Paradise Aliens, transform myth into civic memory, ritual, and belonging.
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Paradise Aliens is a series of monumental murals about migration, climate change and mythology.
Commissioned by Pivot Arts
Curated by Jorge Silva
Currently Exhibited 2025-2026
at the Wirtz Center for Performance Arts Northwestern University, Chicago, IL
Financed by the Illinois Art Council Creative Accelerator Grant and the BIG Read 250 from the National Endowment of the Arts.
The WonderMask Pilgrimage is a processional performance by Alonso Galue that merges ancestral ritual with contemporary public intervention. Galue transforms Chicago’s urban landscape into a moving stage one where myth, memory, and resistance converge.
The Weeping Nation is a performative intervention developed by Venezuelan artist Alonso Galue, exploring themes of exile, memory, and national mourning through the figure of a mother searching for her lost children. Drawing on Latin American folklore—including figures such as La Llorona, La Sayona, and La Loca Luz Caraballo—the work reframes these mythic maternal archetypes within the contemporary context of forced migration and political displacement.
Galue’s interest in what is universally human informs his painting subjects. A Venezuelan artist running from a corrupted system building narratives through art installations, his latest work is a series of paper murals portraying the instability of the mind and the eternal conflict with oneself. Using inexpensive materials to address labor, totalitarianism, mental health, and immigration, Galue’s immersive experiences, influenced by Latin American absurdism and magical realism, highlight the abilities of low-income people as laborers, artists, and humans.
“Plaza Sesamo or Sesame Street was a way to learn about American society as an immigrant – new language, new rules, new system – and consequently, myself.” A puppet is an extension of the puppeteer, and as so represents the various character voices that live within our minds. “I do not aspire to make my art beautiful, but rather to be an ongoing investigation that responds to the human condition.”
Vulture's Lullaby
Presented at Stop Motion Plant and Scratch Night at the International Physical Theatre Festival
In Vulture’s Lullaby, artist and performer Alonso Galue channels the voice of a mythic being born from the scraps of a society in crisis. Wearing hand-crafted vulture masks made from rope and paper bags, Galue transforms into a spectral presence—prophet and scavenger—emerging from the urban skyline to deliver a haunting monologue.
For this exhibition, Agitator opened itself to the community’s input and participation. Its walls were covered in large rolls of paper and announcements went out that the gallery was inviting the public to enter and draw on the walls leaving their own art, paintings and comments. The advance publicity invited everyone into the gallery and welcomed all to join in a “public mural painting party.”
This project was curated by Agitator member, Alonso Galue, who spent hours every week adding to the murals and interacting with gallery visitors who stopped by to see the work and draw on the walls.
In collaboration with Wendy Madrigal
Curated by Lorena Diaz
Presented at Floating World Gallery
The Marisol Experiment is a multidisciplinary installation project inspired by the work and legacy of Venezuelan-American artist Marisol Escobar, often hailed as the "mother of Pop Art." Developed in collaboration with artist Wendy Madrigal and curated by Lorena Diaz, the exhibition reimagines Marisol’s bold visual language—her use of geometric forms, portraiture, and assemblage—through a contemporary lens grounded in Chicago’s vibrant theater and art communities.
Objects become extensions of oneself and our relationship with others. We can think of letters, pictures, and phone calls as forms of communication. For immigrants, the box is one of those elements. The boxes carry food, toys, objects, and anything that can reunite us with our loved ones.
The sent toys are not just toys, but also an augmentation of the presence of the sender. A Kermit plushy is not just a Kermit plushy but “ The Kermit Auntie Rosa sent me”. After a few years, the collected objects become part of the family growing constantly to create a tangible city filled with artificial but authentic aunts, siblings, and friends. “You are here” and “I am there” is an installation project that makes these kinds of connections evident.
Contrary to the work of the social realist painters the work features strong and vivid colors; at first sight, one thinks it is a happy portrait, but when we look closer we find the Venezuelan National Guard shocking a protester while W bites them in the back, two smiling protesters now refugees smile in the front layer of the image, with that constant happiness in the adversity that characterizes the South-American population.
IMMIGRANTS TO GO makes us notice the presence of the other, the one that we don’t love, the one that we don’t want to recognize because we wouldn’t forgive ourselves if we understood why he is here or what caused his forced displacement to a new territory. Land that allegedly would offer a better quality of life perhaps, at the same time, limits immigrants’ bodies, their spaces and their will in their unpersonified lives. Labor immigrants are disposable existences swallowed by a social system and seasonal jobs.
This exhibition at the Center for Contemporary Art Galeria La Otra Banda in Merida , Venezuela explores the fragility of family, memory, and individual identity using immersive large-scale ink drawings on unprinted news paper rolls.
Exhibited during Potential Energy Puppets Up Close at the Chicago Cultural Center, this mural looks into the moments of dissonance and cultural hybridity using characters from sesame street and carnivals to create a mindscape of our century.
The Weeping Nation is a performative intervention developed by Venezuelan artist Alonso Galue, exploring themes of exile, memory, and national mourning through the figure of a mother searching for her lost children. Drawing on Latin American folklore—including figures such as La Llorona, La Sayona, and La Loca Luz Caraballo—the work reframes these mythic maternal archetypes within the contemporary context of forced migration and political displacement.
Paradise Aliens is a series of monumental murals that weave together climate change, forced migration, and the lingering presence of pre-Hispanic deities. Set in landscapes that oscillate between the sublime and the contaminated, these works portray nature not as untouched, but as mythic terrain reshaped by human greed and survival. Each scene summons folkloric beings and alien forms—guardians, monsters, exiles—who emerge from clouds, mountains, and ruins, confronting the viewer with the question: What spirits have we awakened in reshaping the earth in our image?
The WonderMask Pilgrimage is a processional performance by Alonso Galue that merges ancestral ritual with contemporary public intervention. Donning a towering mask handmade from cardboard and tape, Galue transforms Chicago’s urban landscape into a moving stage—one where myth, memory, and resistance converge.
“Plaza Sesamo or Sesame Street was a way to learn about American society as an immigrant – new language, new rules, new system – and consequently, myself.” A puppet is an extension of the puppeteer, and as so represents the various character voices that live within our minds. “I do not aspire to make my art beautiful, but rather to be an ongoing investigation that responds to the human condition.” The oversized paintings of self-portraits fighting with themselves while muppets act as observant, actors, or monsters, made with quick and intense brushstrokes, ask from the viewer not their attention but their empathy.
The Marisol Experiment is a multidisciplinary installation project inspired by the work and legacy of Venezuelan-American artist Marisol Escobar, often hailed as the "mother of Pop Art." Developed in collaboration with artist Wendy Madrigal and curated by Lorena Diaz, the exhibition reimagines Marisol’s bold visual language—her use of geometric forms, portraiture, and assemblage—through a contemporary lens grounded in Chicago’s vibrant theater and art communities.
I Hear a Symphony is a collaborative project in which W Madrigal and Alonso Galue created two ephemeral murals showing the migration conflicts from a surrealist and satiric way using expressive brushstrokes and symbolic imagery. mix of cultures Venezuelan-American and Mexican cultures, on heavy-weight paper.
The oversized figures remind us of the work of Mexican muralists like Orozco, Siqueiros, and Diego Rivera following a similar structure in which the colliding images create multiple sequential narratives that end in a portrait of the artists.
For this exhibition, Agitator opened itself to the community’s input and participation. Its walls were covered in large rolls of paper and announcements went out that the gallery was inviting the public to enter and draw on the walls leaving their own art, paintings and comments. The advance publicity invited everyone into the gallery and welcomed all to join in a “public mural painting party.”
The Weeping Nation presented at the Chicago Cultural Center -
Across history the figure of mothers looking for their children lost to totalitarianism, violence, division. This puppetry piece explores the feelings of a nation that cries their refugees.
