Juan Carlos Quintana (b.1964, Lutcher, LA) is a visual artist based in Oakland, CA. His family immigrated from Cuba in the early 60’s settling in St John Parish, in a region along the Mississippi River known for its antebellum sugar plantations and petrochemical refineries. Using painting, printmaking, ceramics and mixed media installations, Quintana’s art is imbued with an anti-colonial sensibility. Often satirical in tone, his works oscillate between personal and forgotten histories, current events, speculative time periods, and ideological conundrums. He has exhibited in galleries and museums nationally and internationally as well as recipient of many awards and residencies, including the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculpture grant award.

During his tw0-week residency at A Studio In The Woods he to delved deeper into the history of the region and his personal history growing up on the banks of the Mississippi River which will be showcased in the curated exhibit by Shana M. griffin and former Studio resident Tia-Simone Gardner, A Nation Takes Place, on view at the Minnesota Marine Art Museum. A Nation Takes Place interrogates the ways maritime art and the imaginaries of seafaring are tethered to the lethal technologies of enslavement, colonialism, genocide, dispossession, and extraction. The exhibition and its accompanying residencies, convenings, and catalog draw connections between water, nation, sovereignty, race, and reimagined ecologies introducing audiences to the core ideas behind A Nation Takes Place and highlighting the work that is happening in the Gulf South region.