Guillermo Gómez-Peña

Guillermo Gómez-Peña is a Chicano performance artist, writer, activist, and educator. He was born in Mexico City, and moved to the US in 1978, earning a BA and MA at California Institute of the Arts. He has created work in multiple media, including performance art, experimental radio, video, photography and installation art. Included in Gómez-Peña’s over 20 books include essays, experimental poetry, and chronicles in both English, Spanish, and Spanglish; his books include Gómez-Peña Unplugged: Texts on Live Art, Social Practice and Imaginary Activism (2020), La Pocha Nostra (2020), Posnacional 2 Glosolalia: Border Poetics Against the Wall (2020), The New World Border: Prophecies, Poems, and Loqueras for the End of the Century (2001), and Codex Espangliensis: From Columbus to the Border Patrol (2001). He is a founding member of the art collective Border Arts Workshop/Taller de Arte Fronterizo and artistic director of the performance art troupe La Pocha Nostra. Gómez-Peña received many honors, including a US Artists fellow award and a MacArthur fellowship (1991), the first Chicano artist to receive the award. He is married to fellow poet and performance artist Balitronica Gómez. He currently lives and works in San Francisco.