Aitor Lajarin-Encina is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and organizer born in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Basque Country, Spain, currently working in Fort Collins, Colorado. He received his BFA in painting from the University of Basque Country, Bilbao, and his MFA in visual arts from the University of California, San Diego. Aitor’s various creative work and research interests include contemporary painting and drawing critical issues in the transdisciplinary field, reception and participation aesthetics, alternative self-organizational production, distribution and collaboration models within the arts, and various spaces of intersection between contemporary art and public culture. His work has been shown internationally in private and public institutions in Europe, Asia, North and South America. He is cofounder and codirector of DXIX Projects, a community engagement artist-run initiative initiated in Los Angeles in 2015. Aitor has taught painting, drawing, and interdisciplinary studio classes at UC San Diego and UDLAP in Puebla, Mexico. He is currently an assistant professor in painting in the department of art and art history at Colorado State University, where he is teaching all levels of painting courses and seminars.  He founded K102A Office, a gallery dedicated to offering a space for artists and other cultural producers to develop contemporary art and culture projects with related pedagogical experiences for, from, and with the CSU-Fort Collins-Colorado community.