Alvaro Arróliga

Alvaro Arróliga uses his art to highlight LGBTQ communities in conceptual artistic photographs.

KAMILA VARGAS-GONZALEZ | Dallas Voice Intern
editor@dallasvoice.com

What catches this artist’s eye “isn’t considered cute,” Alvaro Arróliga explains. A comment like this lingers in the mind of the Dallas-based photographer when he is setting up photoshoots in heavily-populated Latinx or Black neighborhoods or in locations that appear abandoned, dirty or trashed with industrial equipment.

Allie y Pedro

Arróliga is a queer photographer and conceptual artist. His photos are provocative, but they also have cultural significance. And at the same time he makes sure he puts a spotlight on queer people of color in DFW communities, creating his works around themes of destigmatizing the culture of queer, people of color communities in fashion.

“My idea is to have people like me or people from my community, in a context of fashion or lifestyle, go against what they tell us fashion should be or look like,” Arróliga explains.

Often, he says, he finds himself DIY’ing sets or deconstructing thrifted items to create his projects.

“What defines what’s pretty…” Arróliga inquires. “Where I come from things were not pretty; houses were falling down, places were dirty.”

Arróliga was born in a poverty-stricken neighborhood in Nicaragua and lived there until his teenage years. The arts were not accessible to him or his family, and asking his parents to enroll him in some kind of art class was discouraged.

Years later, he attended community college and enrolled in an art class where he picked up photography. Out of every art medium, Arróliga says photography was the most accessible. Once he got the hang of his craft, he immediately began taking pictures of his community in Oak Cliff and the community in Nicaragua.

The earliest pivotal moment for the photographer came in 2017 when he went back to Nicaragua for a visit. To keep strengthening his artistic muscle, he took on an internship opportunity there. He worked with a digital media company named Managua Furiosa that specialized in art, culture and human rights. His first assignment as an intern was to photograph an event called Operación Cuir, which translates as “Operation Queer.”

Damien

Arróliga got to experience and photograph drag shows, workshops, art and activism from an LGBTQ perspective for the first time. He remembers how DIY everything was, especially the drag shows.

“There was a girl who wanted to do drag as a boy, so she went to the restroom and cut her pubes [to make a beard]” Arróliga explains. “They were helping her put it all over her face.”

He returned to Dallas after that summer fascinated with his Latinx community’s styles. That’s when Arróliga got serious about making his own place in the art world and started on his own creative photography collection.

In one of his many collections is his project titled Gabriel y Las Gafas, which references the work of street vendors.

“I grew up with my uncle who would sell sunglasses in the streets,” he remembers. “He would have a big display of sunglasses of different styles, and he would go up every morning to sell. He was very stylish when he wore his own product.”

Eddie

Arróliga continues to explain how his background has influenced his work: “We had this tradition called La Purisima, and we had an altar covered with a tarp or other fabrics. They would put ornaments on it,” Arróliga said. “The idea of decorating the altar — I [refer to] that sometimes when I decorate the stage for the photos.”

While his photography has been a major part of his life, Arróliga has also been a part of creating platforms for other artists to exhibit their work. In 2020, he created Cochoneria, an exhibition used to amplify the work of LGBTQ artists. Cochoneria is Nicaraguan slang used as a slur for gay individuals.

In that same year, he helped create Canorra, an arts collective whose mission is to promote artwork by artists in under-represented populations.

The Latinx community and culture have been a strong force in Arróliga’s life and experiences, and his work makes it obvious he is not shying away from expressing his culture, his background and his identity. Arróliga says he wants to continue embracing and exploring Latinx communities with an emphasis on fashion and styles in the different subcultures.

“I am fascinated by the style, [but I] feel like it is considered tacky and indecent, and my idea is to counteract that,” Arróliga said, explaining how his culture may be perceived. “This can be editorial, this can be fashion, this can be high couture … .”

Arróliga says he will continue to explore the theme of decolonizing fashion in his future collections of photography. “We should feel pretty…” Arróliga insists, emphasizing the importance of accurate Latinx representation in the fashion and art worlds.

For more information on Alvaro Arróliga, visit Arroliga.MyProfile.com. For more information on Canorra, visit Instagram.com/Canorra.