Ayin Es
Relative Strangers
May 16 – July 4, 2026
Opening Reception
May 16, 5 – 7PM
Queering the Family Album: A Panel Discussion
June 6, 11AM
Autobiographical storytelling—often unsettling and raw—is at the core of Ayin’s practice. Rooted in survival, they maneuver between the precipice of memory and identity by disclosing their internal, lived experience while highlighting family estrangement, trauma, disability, and gender politics. Their latest series of paintings originated from an old suitcase of vintage family photos. With playful, satirical tones and thick, textural oil paint, Es recasts these overlooked snapshots and replace their younger self with aspects of their present self. Incorporating their gender-affirming surgery scars with smeared faces, dark rainclouds, and decorative hues of the 1960s and 1970s, these paintings disrupt the family hierarchies that rendered them invisible.
About Ayin Es
Ayin Es is a self-taught, nonbinary artist and Los Angeles native now based in Joshua Tree, California. Their work emerges from a life shaped by resilience and transformation. Emancipated at fifteen after growing up in an abusive home, Es draws on lived experience, creating deeply personal work that addresses family trauma, disability, memory, and LGBTQ+ matters through painting, installation, soft sculpture, and bookmaking.
Es's work is held in collections including the Getty, the Brooklyn Museum, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and also enriches spaces of healing, including the UC San Francisco Precision Cancer Center, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and Los Angeles General Medical Center.
A two-time ARC Grant recipient from the Durfee Foundation and the National Arts and Disability Center/California Arts Council, Es has also received a Pollock-Krasner Fellowship, the Wynn Newhouse Award, and a 2023 Artist Achievement Award from the National Arts and Disability Center at UCLA. Their work has been reviewed in Artillery, LA Times, Seattle Times, ArtScene, LA Weekly, and WhiteHot Magazine, among others.