Ruben Ulises Rodriguez Montoya In the Garden of Earthly Delights: I Bend to Paradise

Ruben Ulises Rodriguez Montoya (b. 1989, Parral, Chihuahua, MX) is a multidisciplinary artist and myth-maker whose work centers around anthologies and social issues concerning border culture, abjection, adaptation, and mestizaje. Aided by speculative fiction, cultural mythologies, science fiction, and the labor of his family, his work hybridizes and creates parallels between the land, the human, and the animal as a way to investigate the process in which violence eradicates, erases, and erodes communities of color.

Ruben Ulises Rodriguez Montoya uses silicone and cast-off materials–salvaged from landfill-adjacent deserts near his childhood home in New Mexico, or the streets and markets of Mexico City where he currently lives—to give form to a post-apocalyptic future. In this speculative future, we are given a chance to heal from the wounds we suffer today: environmental destruction, racism, violence. Rodriguez’s sculptures and installations are animistic, interdependent systems—part sentient being, part machine propelling us toward a more just and more enlightened future. Drawing on Mesoamerican cosmology, Rodriguez views his sculptures as Nahuales, shape-shifting beings that oscillate between human and animal states. “They are stand-ins for the human body,” he says, “used to explore how violence erases and eradicates communities of color. In this future apocalypse, processes of decay, regeneration, and shapeshifting for protection and survival graft new meaning upon our understandings of an ecosystem.”

This exhibition is located at ICA San Diego Central.

Saturday, February 21, 2026 - Sunday, May 24, 2026

Complimentary guided tours available every Saturday at 12:30pm!