I am Alonso Galue, a Venezuelan-American artist, puppeteer, and cultural worker based in Chicago. I hold a BFA from the University of Los Andes and have been a member of Agitator Gallery since 2019. I build immersive, emotionally charged environments using humble materials like cardboard, painter’s tape, poster board, fabric, rooted in stories of migration, totalitarianism, mental health, and collective survival.

I was raised in Venezuela during years of deep crisis—surrounded by firebombs, military lockdowns, hunger, and silence. Those memories appear in my work as broken lines, frayed volumes, and urgent colors. I don’t aim for beauty. My work is a constant investigation as portraits of humanity that, like us, deform, collapse, and disappear. If we die, the work should die too.

My practice expands on classical painting and sculpture, reinterpreting them as site-responsive installations and large-scale puppetry. I believe in using accessible materials, not as a compromise, but as resistance. I want to show the creative potential of low-income and immigrant communities. What’s fragile can still be monumental.

In Weeping Mother Nation, shown at the Chicago Cultural Center, a towering cardboard mother wandered through Logan Square searching for her lost children—a metaphor for the displaced. In The Wonder Mask Pilgrimage, developed in collaboration with the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, we led a public procession from Logan Square to the Cultural Center, stopping at iconic artworks like the Picasso and the Bean. We walked with characters made in community workshops, ending in a ritual of animals and prophets dancing to drums—a shared mythology of survival and joy.

I create installations that shape the spectator’s movement, forcing them to step lightly over fragile plates of food, or to squeeze through tight spaces during moments of political tension. My work interrupts daily numbness. It brings us back to the body, to memory, to what’s shared but buried.

Art, to me, is not a luxury. It is a form of protest, presence, and repair. It’s how I hold onto what matters and how I invite others to remember what they’ve tried to forget.