Candy-Sized: Love Letters, Free Economy, Vancouver, BC - forthcoming
2026
Tender Threads, Surrey Art Gallery, Surrey, BC
2026
SIRENSIREN, People, Vancouver, BC - curatorial project
2025
Vulnerable Pleasures, Corpo Freudiano Vancouver Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis with Gallery Gachet, Vancouver, BC
2025
Fibre: CAROLINE ACHAINTRE, JONATHAN ALFARO, GHISLAIN BROWN-KOSSI, Wil Abale, Vancouver, BC
2023
High-Fructose Sun, Burrard Arts Foundation – solo Vancouver, BC
2023
Thank You James H, Burrard Arts Foundation Garage – solo Vancouver, BC
2023
Curator's Sauna, Canton-Sardine, Vancouver BC
2023
Transmissions, Art Gallery at Evergreen, Coquitlam, BC
2018
Intertwined, Michael O’Brian Exhibition Commons, Vancouver, BCGrants, Awards + Residencies
2024
Dear Friends &, Resident Artist, The Capilano Review and The Western Front, Vancouver, BC
2023
Burrard Arts Foundation Artist Residency, Vancouver, BC
2023
Canada Council for the Arts, Concept to Realization Grant
2022
New Media Gallery Micro Residency Program, New Westminster, BC
2022
Canada Council for the Arts, Research and Creation Grant
2021
Canada Council for the Arts, Research and Crearion Grant
2019
Audain Art Museum RBC Emerging Artist Program, Whistler, BCPublications + Published Writing
2024
The Capilano Review Spring Issue
2021
Kaur, Russna. Interviewed by Jonathan Alfaro. “A Conversation with: Russna Kaur.” 33 Acres Brewing Company, 22 April 2021 www.33acresbrewing.com/a-conversation-with-russna-kaur/
2017
Alfaro, Jonathan. Keepsakes for the Displaced. Freq Magazine
2017
Alfaro, Jonathan and Magalena Gorski. Catalytic Communities: People of the Hills. Freq Magazine, Vol 2, Issue 11.Artist Talks
2026
Weaving Synposium, Surrey Art Gallery - forthcoming
2025
Contemporary Arts Society of Vancouver, Studio Tour
2024
Centre A, Writing Mentorship Program Studio Tour
2024
Langara Artist Speaker Series
2023
Langara Artist Speaker Series
2023
Contemporary Arts Society of VancouverEducation
2022
NSCAD University – Anna Leonowens Gallery Certificate in Gallery + Studio Management, Halifax, NS
2020
BFA Visual Arts + Minor in Curatorial Studies – Emily Carr University, Vancouver, BCRelated Work
2025
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Preparator, Surrey Art Gallery, Surrey, BC
2023
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Archives + Library Catalogue Management, Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, Vancouver, BC
2023
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Preparator, Art Gallery at Evergreen, Coquitlam BC
2023
-2026
Studio Manager, Brent Wadden Studio, Vancouver, BC
2023
Programming Jury, Modern Fuel, Kingston, ON
2023
Canada Council for the Arts Research and Creation Peer Jury
2022
Canada Council for the Arts Research and Creation Peer Jury
2022
-2025
Museum Library Catalogue Management, Rennie Museum, Vancouver, BC
2022
Invigilator for exhibition 51@51, Rennie Museum, Vancouver, BC
2022
Canada Council for the Arts Research and Creation Peer Jury
2020
Project Management, The Museum of Other Realities, Vancouver, BC
2010
Studio assistant to Nancy Patterson, Toronto, ON
Jonathan Alfaro is a queer, LatinX interdisciplinary artist working on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy ̓əm, Sḵwx ̱wú7mesh, and səl ̓ílwətaʔɬ nations. Alfaro holds a BFA from Emily Carr University. Recent exhibitions have been held at Art Gallery Evergreen, Canton-Sardine, and the Burrard Arts Foundation (all 2023). Alfaro was selected for the Audain Art Museum’s RBC Emerging Artist Program (2019), and has participated in residencies at the New Media Gallery (2022), the Burrard Arts Foundation (2023), and the resident artist for the Dear Friends, reading series hosted by The Capilano Review and The Western Front (2024).
I learned to be ashamed of my brown skin. Television taught me I belonged to a culture that could only be portrayed by drunk men in sombreros. I created distance; repressed and consigned my history to the fraction of european blood held within my last name.
A commitment to textiles led me to investigate my grandfather’s work. I learned that it too was a colonial project—even in the central mountains of Mexico, colonialism made its lasting mark.
Fingers working within the threads stretched on the loom
my grandfather’s hands as my own
knowledge in the blood we share.
Holding the woollen yearn I sit, working
working line by line; working thread by thread
over under, over under.
Imagine the length, the distance this could cover.Asteroid Salve
2020
Zach Polis reads of an asteroid coming in particles so small we may not even notice. Before this seems so distant from the now, and tomorrow further still. Will there be a time again when we’re no longer scared to embrace those who mean most? Time’s blurring; days and somehow weeks seem to blow by and equally take forever to pass. I always joked with friends about how nice it’d be to retire early, but this isn’t what I had in mind. I hadn’t imagined feeling trapped in my own home, within my own arms reach. Instagram shows everyone finding ways to be productive, and yet I find myself barely able to get out of bed and showered. It should be easy, with all this time; between the daily press briefings there seem to be only a few moments to make food and curl in bed. My partner’s heart beat upon my skin keeps me calm and present. The small of their neck is my salve, their voice is my salve, the way they look at me with compassion is my salve. Lauren Wetmore taught me that time itself was unprecedented, and that is what makes all time the same.
I’ve been ruminating about the words in bell hook’s Teaching To Transgress ever since I read it a few weeks ago. She speaks of all the ways that language itself can alter our way of understanding ideas and spreading knowledge. That by writing and speaking words that are altogether too academic we hinder the ability of so many to enter our thoughts. I imagine it as a way of loosening language, allowing it to be with its surroundings—giving language its own voice. This liquid medium that can fill every void around it between every crevice, into every ear.
These tiny bits of asteroids will never fully wash clean from our clothes. They’ll be something we find in years to come baked onto our window sills while cleaning after winters past.Creamed Blush
2020-2022
I stand in front of the mirror applying lotions and creams, working them in with the tips of my fingers then whole hands; I feel their warmth transfer to my skin. I see the dark circles that have grown darker as I've slept less and less over the past few years—I focus more tenderness there. Pressing creamed blush into my cheeks to appear freshly in from brisk air I think to myself how nice it is to be in a routine, to feel useful and needed.
Today I'm going to work, I'll be walking through downtown closer to people than I should be. Within a few months this distance will shrink further down to 6 feet and eventually nothing. Up Keefer Street right across from the soccer field and to the gate at work. Door locked separated from the outside I turn on music and set the store just as it would be on a regular day.
Just a few weeks later I'd loose my routine. Days began to collapse on themselves and expand equally as much. An hour is a second, a day, a week, a month.
Still now, over two years later time plays a satirical role in my life. One Three Two Four
2019
One
In between hours of work and school I make my way to the studio. Unpack my bag, taking off my shoes and sit at the loom. There’s a smell in the air that’s only amplified with the heat of the radiator, it’s a mixture of grass and wet animal, sometimes our dog would smell like this in the rain. I sit at the loom, this stool who’s rolling wheels I took off at my mothers suggestion that I’d gain more stability grounds me, allowing me to push down on the treadles with ease; my weight teetering on the edge. I press down the treadles and throw the shuttle between the yarns. The bobbin spinning makes a whirling sound, I bring down the beater and the loom rattles.
Three
It’s as dark as a city gets outside, theres a humming sound of cars driving by and street lights beaming. It’s raining and I contemplate hailing a cab home, but the walk is only another 32 minutes, I have to be at work pretending to be awake in 5 hours. Ira Glass introduces a story of a Black journalist who’s family moved to Russia from the states searching for a better life, I make a mental note to look her up later. My feet are walking in the motion of the treadles, I feel like I haven’t stopped thinking in weaving for a few months. I woke up yesterday feeling like I was already at the loom.
Two
There’s a juvenile joy in eating a pink popsicle on a white couch.
Four
My mother is sitting beside me so I can listen to her while I work away. She tells me stories of when she moved away from home with my father to contrast my frustrations of being an adult. She tells me that seeing me weaving reminds me of her father weaving on his barn loom, but makes an observation that while I’m weaving blankets, he wove sarapes. I find this both hilarious and troubling. I’ve been trying to find this knowledge and somehow missed an important detail. Her voice fades as I imagine long sarapes cascading down from ceilings. Closed Eyes
2019-2022
Monica Lewinsky influenced my life; haven’t we all fallen in love with someone we weren’t supposed to? I think of how her hurt made my love feel more valid—made space for a growing heart. I’ve fallen in love on a bus ride home from work, looking at the person sitting across from me. Our eyes meet, and in a moment I feel years of sweet nothings, and sunlit Sunday mornings. They glance down at their phone and that lifetime in a moment is lost forever maintained as a memory of gentle care.
I remember watching Martha after school. Entrenched in a world of effortlessly flipped omelettes and refinished painted porches. It was so easy to imagine myself in a world that existed so comfortably in the infrathin of reality and make believe. Sitting in the backyard by our koi pond, I’d day dream looking over an acreage—easily ignoring the metal shed and cracked paving blocks. I lost my pet painted turtle in that pond.
The built lego rafts and our lunch hour adventures were not enough for a turtle found on the cliffs of a decommissioned quarry. It's transition to an aquarium habitat in exchange for my love was not a fair trade. The walls were too endless for a tiny adventurer.
Reminiscing on the countless unanswered letters I wrote to Martha during that time. I realize that I never truly expected to receive a response. As hopeful as I was, I always knew those letters would land upon closed eyes.
Waiting on the door mat when I got home for lunch, the turtle came back the next summer. Portrait/ Self Portrait
2018
Turned to landscapes—skin becomes terrain. Between these linen sheets I breathe softer, slower, and deeper; I will our hearts to beat to feel their synching echo on my chest. It is with this skin to skin that our bodies begin to merge, as though two fibres spun we’re entangled in each others limbs.
Their breath over the sound of a distanced phone; though asleep on their end, together we spend the night. If only two souls could share the space one body I could be eternally closer.
our skin touching
our heart beating
Until closer to the rising sun than to its setting; formed in the mountain air two bodies become one