“Alba’s work is raw, anti-academic, and frank in its depiction of contemporary politics and society,” Kelly Carper, curator of Lifted Labor.
Art is labor, and nowhere is this more apparent than Andrew Alba’s newest show Lifted Labor, which features roughly-hewn and boldly-colored paintings created with construction materials instead of traditional artistic media. The descendant of Mexican migrant workers and a construction worker himself, Alba is keenly aware of the politics of hard labor—and its effects on the body. “Alba’s artistic approach is based on his experience growing up in Salt Lake City, Utah as a descendant of Mexican migrant workers. Through his use of non-traditional materials collected from his day job in construction, Alba communicates anti-establishment narratives to the working class,” says Kelly Carper.