CV Valenzuela 

Maintaining an active art practice for over three decades, working across traditional and nontraditional media. Grounded in the belief that anything can be art, but not everything is art, Valenzuela’s work is driven by the need for criteria—structures that allow for exploration, explanation, symbiosis, and clarity. This qualification forms the conceptual foundation of a practice that investigates how meaning is assembled, stabilized, and challenged.

Born in the 1970s and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, Valenzuela has lived throughout the United States and traveled extensively both domestically and abroad. These experiences have deeply informed an interest in cultural variance, communication, and interpretation.

Two influences stand out prominently within Valenzuela’s body of work. The first is the lived experience of encountering multiple versions of what is ostensibly the same language. Speaking English across regions, accents, idioms, and cadences revealed moments of misalignment and misunderstanding that suggested not only the evolution of language, but the instability of meaning itself. These encounters prompted an early reckoning with how systems we assume to be fixed are, in fact, fluid and contingent.

The second influence emerged through written language, particularly early exposure to local journalism via a local periodical. Unsurprisingly, Initially perceived as a clear and authoritative source, closer reading revealed patterns of bias, omission, and editorial framing. This realization led to a broader inquiry into how information is constructed and how all news—regardless of source—carries embedded perspectives and agendas that shape interpretation.

Together, these influences continue to inform Valenzuela’s practice, which interrogates language, material, and structure as aggregates of fallible components. Through processes of fragmentation, reassembly, and material experimentation, the work explores how belief, authority, and meaning are built from unstable parts—and why, despite this instability, we persist in trusting the scaffolding.