Cristina Molina
Cristina Molina is a visual artist who hails from the subtropics of Miami and currently lives and works in New Orleans—two environmentally precarious cities that have influenced her research on identity, loss, and disappearing landscapes. Spanning video installation, photography, and performance, Molina’s artwork is set amidst vulnerable terrains both real and imagined. Using the language of magical realism, her works reshape and centralize little-known narratives to upend dominant histories.
Molina’s projects are typically collaborative and often include the participation of The Crystal Efemmes—a myth-building collective that produces immersive installations and performances with feminist agendas. Parallel to her individual practice Molina has a creative investment in community building. From 2014-20 she was a member of the New Orleans artist-run project, The Front where she curated artwork and co-organized The Front’s annual film festival. In 2023, Molina co-founded Camp Street Studios and The Parlour Gallery, an artist-run production and exhibition space in the Arts District of Downtown New Orleans. Cristina Molina is a Professor of New Media + Animation and Gallery Director at Southeastern Louisiana University where she received the 2018 President’s Award for Excellence in Artistic Activity and was the recipient of the Viola Brown Endowed Professorship in Visual and Dramatic Arts from 2020-22.
Molina has received numerous national awards and fellowships, including the Fulbright Scholar Award, the Artist in Residence in Everglades Fellowship (2019), and the Joan Mitchell Center Residency (2021). Her projects have received support from the National Association for Latino Arts and Culture, The Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2020, Molina was one of the 61 artists selected for the survey exhibition State of the Art at Crystal Bridges Museum. Her work has been featured at institutions such as the New Orleans Museum of Art, Project Row Houses Houston, Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, The Ogden Museum of Southern Art, The Polk Museum, the New Orleans Film Festival, and the Syros International Film Festival, among others.
