Public Lecture: Rubén Ulises Rodríguez Montoya

Rubén Ulises Rodríguez Montoya

Join Cranbrook Academy of Art at deSalle Auditorium for a free, public lecture with Rubén Ulises Rodríguez Montoya, In the Garden of Earthly Delights: I Bend to Paradise, on Wednesday, March 11, 2026, at 6pm. Please enter through the Cranbrook Academy of Art Library; Cranbrook Art Museum’s galleries close at 5pm.

In the Garden of Earthly Delights: I Bend to Paradise – A Vampire surreptitiously boards the last spaceship to ever leave Earth after Earth is no longer viable. The ship explodes in space because of its immortality. The Vampire is the sole survivor of the blast, and The Vampire must learn to reconstitute itself and learn to survive with the technology of the ship.

Rubén Ulises Rodríguez Montoya is an artist based in Mexico City. Montoya received his MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2020. He creates sculptures that are fantastic beings centered around anthologies and social issues concerning border culture, abjection, adaptation, and mestizaje. Montoya’s practice is aided by Speculative Fiction, Nahualismo, Sci-Fi, and the labor of his family. His work hybridizes and creates parallels between land, human, and animal as a way to investigate the process in which violence eradicates, erases, and erodes communities of color. Upcoming exhibitions include a solo exhibition of new work (ICA San Diego, 2025–2026). Recent exhibitions include Flow States – LA TRIENAL 2024 (El Museo de Barrio, 2024–2025), and Skinchangers: Begotten of my Flesh (2024).

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Rubén Ulises Rodríguez Montoya, “Okay Pei Mei, here I come” / I will swallow the sun.
2024