Artist Rubén Esparza shares Ghosted: Cruising/No Cruising, a new photographic installation documenting active and former cruising sites around Los Angeles. Prints depicting locations like Elysian Park and what was once Circus of Books are christened with Esparza’s own genetic matter, facilitating a charged visual exercise in love, lust and loss.

Ghosted is part of our NO CRUISING program, at NAVEL from May 16–18. A portion of this program’s proceeds will be donated to the California Coalition for Women Prisoners’s #MeTooBehindBars initiative.

Rubén Esparza is an LA-based artist and independent curator whose practice includes painting and the creation of both analog and digital works engaging elements of Conceptualism, ethnicity and queer culture. His artworks live in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the Santa Barbara Museum, the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, to name just a few. His curatorial work focuses on under-represented artists primarily in queer and ethnic communities. He is both founder and director of the Queer Biennial, an arts exhibition anchored in Los Angeles with satellites in New York, Mexico, Miami, Paris, and Zurich.

Image by Rubén Esparza