JONATHAN H ALFAROb. 1992, Windsor, Ontario
Lives and works in Vancouver, BC
Work202620252024202320222021202020192018Select Projects2026
SIRENSIREN, People, Vancouver, BC - curatorial project
2025
Vulnerable Pleasures, Corpo Freudiano Vancouver School of Psychoanalysis with Gallery Gachet, Vancouver, BC2024
Dear Friends &, Resident Artist, The Capilano Review and The Western Front, Vancouver, BC2023
Curator’s Sauna, Canton-Sardine, Vancouver, BC2023
High-Fructose Sun, Burrard Arts Foundation, Vancouver, BC2023
Transmissions, Art Gallery at Evergreen, Coquitlam, BC CVSelect Exhibitions2027
Candy-Sized, Free Economy, Vancouver, BC - forthcoming2026
Tender Threads, Surrey Art Gallery, Surrey, BC2026
SIRENSIREN, People, Vancouver, BC - curatorial project2025
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, BC2023
High-Fructose Sun, Burrard Arts Foundation – solo Vancouver, BC
2023
Thank You James H, Burrard Arts Foundation Garage – solo Vancouver, BC2023
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 + Residencies2024
Dear Friends &, Resident Artist, The Capilano Review and The Western Front, Vancouver, BC2023
Burrard Arts Foundation Artist Residency, Vancouver, BC2023
Canada Council for the Arts, Concept to Realization Grant2022
New Media Gallery Micro Residency Program, New Westminster, BC2022
Canada Council for the Arts, Research and Creation Grant2021
Canada Council for the Arts, Research and Crearion Grant2019
Audain Art Museum RBC Emerging Artist Program, Whistler, BCPublications + Published Writing2024
The Capilano Review Spring Issue2021
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 Magazine2017
Alfaro, Jonathan and Magalena Gorski. Catalytic Communities: People of the Hills. Freq Magazine, Vol 2, Issue 11.Artist Talks2026
Weaving Synposium, Surrey Art Gallery - forthcoming2025
Contemporary Arts Society of Vancouver, Studio Tour2024
Centre A, Writing Mentorship Program Studio Tour2024
Langara Artist Speaker Series2023
Langara Artist Speaker Series2023
Contemporary Arts Society of VancouverEducation2022
NSCAD University – Anna Leonowens Gallery Certificate in Gallery + Studio Management, Halifax, NS2020
BFA Visual Arts + Minor in Curatorial Studies – Emily Carr University, Vancouver, BCRelated Work2025
-
Preparator, Surrey Art Gallery, Surrey, BC2023
-
Archives + Library Catalogue Management, Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, Vancouver, BC2023
-
Preparator, Art Gallery at Evergreen, Coquitlam BC
2023
-2026
Studio Manager, Brent Wadden Studio, Vancouver, BC2023
Programming Jury, Modern Fuel, Kingston, ON2023
Canada Council for the Arts Research and Creation Peer Jury2022
Canada Council for the Arts Research and Creation Peer Jury
2022
-2025
Museum Library Catalogue Management, Rennie Museum, Vancouver, BC2022
Invigilator for exhibition 51@51, Rennie Museum, Vancouver, BC2022
Canada Council for the Arts Research and Creation Peer Jury2020
Project Management, The Museum of Other Realities, Vancouver, BC2010
Studio assistant to Nancy Patterson, Toronto, ON Fibre: CAROLINE ACHAINTRE, JONATHAN ALFARO, GHISLAIN BROWN-KOSSI
Wil Aballe
April 29 - May 24, 2025
Exhibtion Text by Alex Gibson
Material conversations float through space between the works of Caroline Achaintre, Jonathan Alfaro, and Ghislain Brown-Kossi. Time, texture, and tactility ground these artists’ exploration of visual language, histories, and craft, through a multiplicity of detailed processes. Fibre becomes the medium through which they inhabit unique visual threads to highlight an array of tangible histories.
French-born artist Ghislain Brown-Kossi weaves together an understanding of pattern and communication through symbols in relief, painting references to ancestral African patterns which are iterated, commodified, and integrated into contemporary society. With a background in fashion, Kossi uses bold colours and repetition to define the materiality of textile as language, investigating cultural opacity through textural legibility.
Jonathan Alfaro is a queer, LatinX interdisciplinary artist who similarly explores language through an intertwined relationship of writing and textiles. His practice asks us to embrace ambiguous fields of colour with curiosity, in order to seek understanding through abstraction. Alfaro’s work is made through processes of weaving and bleaching yarn, which questions the material’s surface and capacity to translate. The result is fibre that reads as both textile and painting.
Fragmented threads and views are explored in the work of French-German multimedia artist Caroline Achaintre. Her hand-tufted wool tapestry drapes off of itself creating an abstracted image with both invitation and repulsion. Achaintre’s research gathers multiple strings of reference which identify a dynamic between the ancient and modern, where her work uses this to reframe soft textile into differing fused narratives. The work stitches together scenes that take on a life of their own.
Fibre as an enigmatic medium in multi-purposed states builds a visual language with wonder and surprise. It preserves the labour of material exploration, while revealing new visual dynamics through reconnected use and intent. This ultimately magnifies moments where communication happens on the grounds of tactile sensibility, bringing into question an unbound breadth in the fibres of understanding.