(Mexico City, 1969)
Lives and works in Mexico City
Javier Areán is an artist who primarily works in painting and drawing, occasionally experimenting with alternative media such as video, installation, and performance. His work is rooted in the study of memory and its relationship with artistic creation, specifically, through the concept of postmemory. The practice of postmemory is common among generations following conflicts, in which the children or grandchildren of those who experienced personal, collective, and cultural traumas "Inherit memories" that are emotionally transmitted to them through stories, images, objects, and behaviors. Intellectually and artistically, he is driven to confront the complexity of the past through the intertwined fragmentation of these lost memories.
Areán's work has been widely exhibited in biennials, museums, contemporary art fairs, and commercial galleries in Mexico and abroad. His work has been recognized in the selection of the X and XI editions of the FEMSA Biennial in Monterrey (2012 and 2014), as well as in the XVIII and XIX editions of the Rufino Tamayo Painting Biennial (2018 and 2020) and the National Painting Biennial Julio Castillo (2020). He has received a scholarship sponsored by the Fundación/Colección Jumex, the Milton Avery Fellowship in New York, and a full residency scholarship at the Vermont Studio Center.
His work is part of public collections at the National Printmaking Museum, the Museum of Foreign Relations, the Institute of Graphic Arts of Oaxaca, the Museum of the City of Querétaro, and the Kaluz Museum in Mexico City. In 2018, he was recognized as a member of the National System of Art Creators. Currently, he is pursuing a postgraduate degree at the University Central Saint Martins in London with a scholarship from the Secretaría de Cultura and CONACYT.