Raul Moarquech Ferrera-Balanquet is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, curator, and Fulbright scholar born in Havana, Cuba. They hold a Ph.D. from Duke University and earned their M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. They’re a member of Mariel Generation, Latino Midwest Video Collective, Laboratorio Cartodigital, and Afroyucatecxs Collective and are co-executive director of Howard University’s Gallery of Art. Ferrera-Balanquet has organized Where We Meet at The Phillips Collection in Washington D.C.; Sensorial Africana Superrealities: Five Contemporary Diaspora Artists at the IA&A at Hillyer in Washington D.C.; Videos That Unmask, Test and Invade the Colonial System at Video In in Vancouver B.C.; and Arte Nuevo InteractivA in Merida, Mexico.
They are the author of Aestesis Decolonial Transmoderna Latinx_MX (2019) and editor of Andar Erótico Decolonial (2015) and have been published in Transfers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies, Latino Book Review Magazine, Social Text Journal / Periscope, and Bienal de La Habana Para leer, Universitat De Valencia, Spain.
Ferrera-Balanquet’s exhibitions include those at Black History Month, American Academy in Rome, 2025; XIII Bienal de La Habana, 2019; Haceres Decoloniales, Galeria ASAB, Bogota; BE.BOP 2013, Ballhaus Naunynstraße, Berlin; Cuba: La Isla Posible, CCCB, Barcelona. Their grants include those from Critical Minded, FONCA, Merida Cultural Office, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and Lyn Blumenthal Video Foundation. In 2025, he was awarded the Foundation for Contemporary Arts’ Performance Art Emergency Grant to present his ceremonial performance Mariposa Ancestral Memory at the American Academy in Rome, Italy.
t MacDowell, Ferrera-Balanquet worked on a series of mixed media drawings from the series Bulwa Meso/Power to Sense; produced research on their work-in-progress Kairibe Stars and Constellations, an interdisciplinary project; and worked on and copyedited sections of the upcoming novel Vititi Mensu Marielitos’ Mirrors.
