This fall, the Department of Art and Art History welcomes visiting artist Jerónimo Reyes-Retana, who joins Colorado State University to teach in the Electronic Art and Photography areas.

Reyes-Retana comes to CSU from the University of Colorado Boulder’s Critical Media Practices program, where he is a Ph.D. candidate. His work crosses boundaries between art, technology and research, using creative practice to examine the systems and infrastructures that shape communities and environments.

“My practice is driven by the examination of the politics of noise and the poetics of infrastructure shaping Latin American contact zones,” Reyes-Retana said.

Much of his work focuses on places where communities encounter the environmental, social and political consequences of technological development. His practice draws on the field of investigative aesthetics, using artistic methods to examine how systems of power shape what is made visible, documented or understood, as well as what remains obscured.

At CSU, Reyes-Retana plans to continue an established line of research examining the industrialization of the Colorado River and its waters, a crucial resource shared by the United States and Mexico. Through this work, he is interested in what he describes as “regimes of (in)visibility” and the ways critical media practices can be used to investigate systems and conditions that might otherwise remain unseen.

That approach makes Reyes-Retana’s arrival particularly timely as the department explores new connections between Photography and Electronic Art. Rather than treating the two as entirely separate disciplines, his work offers students opportunities to consider how photography, digital media, technology and research can inform one another.

“Jerónimo’s innovative approach to Photography and Electronic Art is a wonderful opportunity for our students,” Department Chair Del Harrow said. “His position is also helping us to grow and innovate as a program, reimagining the boundaries between the Electronic Art and Photography disciplines.”

For Reyes-Retana, those connections extend beyond the Department of Art and Art History. During his time at CSU, he hopes to develop collaborations across the university and create opportunities for artists to participate in conversations that traditionally stretch across disciplinary boundaries.

“I look forward to building bridges of collaboration with other departments, with the aim of cultivating transdisciplinary networks of knowledge production in which the arts can help enable otherwise worldviews,” he said.

That collaborative approach reflects Reyes-Retana’s broader interest in critical media practices, not only in how artists use contemporary technologies and media, but in how creative practice can become a way of investigating and understanding the world around us.