JONATHAN H ALFAROb. 1992, Windsor, Ontario
Lives and works in Vancouver, BC 
Work202620252024202320222021202020192018Select Projects
2026
SIRENSIREN, People, Vancouver, BC - curatorial project 
2025
Vulnerable Pleasures, Corpo Freudiano Vancouver School of Psychoanalysis with Gallery Gachet, Vancouver, BC
2024
Dear Friends &, Resident Artist, The Capilano Review and The Western Front, Vancouver, BC
2023
Curator’s Sauna, Canton-Sardine, Vancouver, BC
2023
High-Fructose Sun, Burrard Arts Foundation, Vancouver, BC
2023
Transmissions, Art Gallery at Evergreen, Coquitlam, BC CVSelect Exhibitions
2027
Candy-Sized, 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
Vulnerable Pleasures
Corpo Freaudiano Vancouver Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis
Gallery Gachet – October 17-18, 2025

Exhibition Catalogue
012 Passport like image of 33 year old Mexican-salvadoran gay man who is 5'6" 140lbs. he has a very small nose. his ears are very small and flat. he has black hair short on sides long length on top. he has dark brown-black eyes. his skin is smooth and youthful, is medium-light tanned in color. he has facial scruff. He is not smiling and his lips are full and blushed in tone. His eyebrows are full, tweezed and groomed, 2025, AI generated image; inkjet print, 30.48 cm x 30.48 cm.
018 Passport like image of a youthful Mexican-salvadoran queer man. He has a small nose, and very small ears. His hair is black, short on sides long on top. He has dark brown-black eyes. His skin is smooth and is medium-light tanned in color. He has facial scruff. He is not smiling and his lips are full and semi-blushed in tone. His eyebrows are full, tweezed and groomed. He is 33 years old, 5'6" 140lbs, 2025, AI generated image; inkjet print, 30.48 cm x 30.48 cm.
026 Passport like image of a youthful Mexican-salvadoran queer artist with a neutral expression. He has a small slim nose, and small short flat ears. His hair is black, short on sides long on top. He has dark brown-black eyes. He has smooth medium tanned skin with neutral undertones. He has facial scruff. His lips are full and semi-blushed in tone. His eyebrows are medium-thick and tweezed to have a flat bottom edge. He is 33 years old, 2025, AI generated image; inkjet print, 30.48 cm x 30.48 cm.
In parallel with the LaConference on Feminine Desire, 12 clinical psychoanalysts were each given one artwork to analyze without knowing who the artist was. Their written responses are the basis of the exhibition, Vulnerable Pleasures.

Drawing on Anne Dufourmantelle and Mari Ruti’s insistence that risk, tenderness, and vulnerability are conditions of subjectivity, the exhibition reimagines analysis as a practice of openness rather than mastery. Here, artworks appear less as objects to master than as enigmatic subjects whose desires unsettle, exceed, and invite us.

Artists + Analysts
Hana Amani + Hilda Fernandez
Tiffany Law + Erik Larson
Damla Tamer + Sharon Green
Jacob Dyrenforth + Dan Collins
Eknoor Matharoo + Mandana Mansouri
Mahsa Farzi + Marco Antonio Coutinho
Alejandra Morales Garza + Mariana Hernández Urías
Megan Hepburn + Juan Luis de la Mora
Christine D’Onofrio + Cindy Zeiher
Saskia Jetten + Rolf Flor
Jonathan Alfaro + Manuel Outón
Rosamunde Bordo + Francine Danniau

curated by Dan StarlingExhibition Catalogue Excerpt by Manuel Outón

The piece of art that I try to analyze explores identity and identification by putting them into play in a photographic series that places us in front of three passport-like photographs, revealing identities that do not pass through the law, but through desire. Hospitable photographs without names, that is, without patriarchal filiation.

Our images in passports serve to identify us, to control our bod-
ies’ displacements through frontiers. But these pieces of art, lacking names, are the reverse of an identity document. By including nation of origin, age, height, and other characteristics, they display/reveal, expose, like the image in the mirror, what each one is and their subjective displacements: gay man, queer man, queer artist.

The artist takes the identity photograph, the most rigid and soulless photographic format, and transforms it into a piece of art, revealing a different identity —one that cannot be represented in a legal document, a university title, a driver’s license, or a Costco card. That’s an identity granted by the state or a supermarket. By the law. The artist’s intervention allows for another identity to come to light from desire, beyond the law.

This series of photographs, of which only three were shown to me—numbered 012, 018, and 026— also has a long textual intervention by the author in each of their titles. The numbers produce this game where what is usually hidden is shown: gay man, queer man, queer artist.

Identity games and filial identifications, not granted by the state,
but by desire. But who says that identification is univocal? Instead, I believe it is versatile and rizomatic, and so I slip in an image of a passport photograph of a gay man, queer man, queer artist. Mexican, not Salvadorian. My son. And with this intervention, I propose a dialogue between the photos, the artist, and the audience.

I think there is nothing more hospitable than involvement/implication.

Ciudad de México, 30 de octubre de 2025.