The George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation

Project Title: Containing Anxiety

Alan Ruiz is an artist whose work examines the production of space as both material and ideology. Through site-reflexive interventions, his work enumerates how architecture enables and obstructs forms of psychic and social life. In his work, he explores constructed space, as well as the various techniques, standards, and media that shape architectural form, to consider the way these mechanisms may reflect social hierarchies, relations of authority, and unconscious processes. 

His investigation of what the built environment contains and excludes extends into the discursive form of writing, public lectures, and workshops. Ruiz has presented talks and participated in public programs at The Chinati Foundation, the Dia Art Foundation, Kunstverein München, The Artist’s Institute, and SculptureCenter. His writing has been published in Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory, Organisational and Social Dynamics, Artforum, Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA), BOMB, and Movement Research Performance Journal. He has held recent solo exhibitions at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT (2024); CCS Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY (2022); and The Kitchen, New York (2021). Ruiz is a recipient of a Creative Capital Award and a NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship in Architecture.