Francisco Donoso: Pathways

FRANCISCO DONOSO

PATHWAYS

Published on the occasion of the exhibition PHOTOGRAPHY:
Pages 3, 8, and 9 courtesy of
Francisco Donoso: Pathways Derrick J. Waller
Curated by Kristen Chiacchia
Second Street Gallery, Charlottesville, Virginia All artwork © by the artist 
April 1 - May 27, 2022

Catalogue design: Sri Kodakalla
Edited by Kristen Chiacchia, Francisco Donoso, & Sri Kodakalla
Printing by T&N Printing

Second Street Gallery would like to acknowledge The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and
the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation for their generous support of the 2021-2022 exhibition
season. This project was supported in part by the Virginia Commission for the Arts, which receives
support from the Virginia General Assembly and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.

Front / back cover & Pages 8-9: Pathways, 2022, Acrylic and spray paint on 9 mylar panels, 102 x 320.5 inches (dimensions variable), detail.

Second Street Gallery is a 501(c)3 nonprofit art organization that presents
exhibitions of contemporary art and related education programs to Central Virginia.
SSG receives funding from individuals, businesses, and foundations through its fundraising and
membership and through local and national grants, including The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.



every fence is an opening or the repellent fence
danilo machado seeing scare-eye balloons
after and for and with francisco donoso (what border?)

look at all we face together: look at us made up
i’m trying not to write another poem acrylic hopscotch
about where i’m not from nimble bends
or about violences, violences
we don’t have to all entangled
start there with each other joy possibilities
we explain ourselves enough climbing
—let’s slide instead
play on the grounds finding our way
(grounds kept by whom if not back, forward,
coffee ground by whom through
white milk mostly air)
remember seeing sky *This poem references In Plain Sight, a public art coalition
writing in plain sight effort organized by rafa esparza and Cassils in 2020, and the
reading TE VEMOS specific contribution by Zachary Drucker, “Nosotras te vemos,”
visible above the South Texas ICE Processing Center; as well as
“Repellent Fence/Valla Repelente” (2015), an art installation over
two miles of the US/Mexico border by Postcommodity (Raven
Chacon, Cristóbal Martínez, and Kade L. Twist).

danilo machado (he/they) is a poet, curator, and critic living on occupied land interested in language’s potential for revealing
tenderness, erasure, and relationships to power. @queershoulders

Come Dance with Me, 2022, Acrylic and spray paint on canvas, 52 x 53 inches

Deconstructing/Reconstructing, 2021, Acrylic and spray paint on A Natural Bridge Across, 2022, Acrylic and spray paint on canvas,
canvas, 52 x 54 inches 52 x 58 inches

Once a Clown, Always a Clown, 2022, Acrylic on canvas, No Borders, Only Playgrounds, 2022, Acrylic and spray paint on
58 x 44 inches canvas, 58 x 46 inches





Fencescape No. 1 - 6, 2022, Mixed media on paper, 28 x 21 inches (dimensions variable)

PATHWAYS | Francisco Donoso

Francisco Donoso’s Pathways explores playful and vibrant
deconstructions of the chain-link fence architecture to invite the
viewer to consider the precariousness of place and belonging.
As an undocumented Ecuadorian-American immigrant, Donoso
reclaims power by re-imagining borders and transforming
them into spaces, places and moments of play, care, possibility
and opportunity, in order to subvert fences as symbols and
architectures of violence, dislocation, and trauma. Through his
layered mixed-media paintings, Donoso creates embodiments
of the human experience that reveal the nuanced and complex
subjectivity of the immigrant. Ebbing and flowing through color
and surreal abstraction, Pathways makes room for competing
forces of familiarity and illegibility to coexist, suggesting the
multivalence and density of the immigrant experience.

Francisco Donoso (he/him) is a transnational artist based in NYC. Originally
from Ecuador, but raised in Miami, FL, he is a recipient of DACA and an
advocate for immigrants. He received his BFA from Purchase College and
has participated in fellowships and residencies at Wave Hill, Stony Brook
University, The Bronx Museum, and the Kates-Ferri Projects among others.
Francisco has exhibited throughout NYC at El Museo del Barrio, The Bronx
Museum, Field Projects, Affordable Art Fair, and Kates-Ferri Projects among
others, in Los Angeles at SPRING/BREAK, and Baik + Khnessyer, in Las
Vegas at the Believer Festival and in Berlin with Emerson Gallery. He is a
recipient of an Artist Corp Grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts
and a Cultural Solidarity Fund Grant. His work is in the permanent collection
of the New York Community Trust and the Kates-Ferri Collection.

His work has been written about in publications like Hyperallergic,
CRUSHfanzine, The Latinx Project Intervenxions, The Financial Times, The
Village Voice, and Art Zealous. He is the owner of the online shop and brand,
Donoso Studio, an immigrant-powered design studio specializing in uniquely
handcrafted art objects and archival prints. He is the founder of The Undocu
Spark Lab, a business incubator for undocumented and immigrant artists
and creative entrepreneurs, fiscally sponsored by the New York State Youth
Leadership Council. He is represented by Kates-Ferri Projects in NYC.

www.franciscodonoso.com | @donosostudio