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.