Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is very pleased to announce three upcoming solo exhibitions by Aaron Maier-Carretero, Jackie Milad, and Roya Farassat. The exhibitions will be on view from February 26 through April 9, 2022, with an opening reception to be held on Saturday, February 26, from 3:00 pm to 7:00 pm. Aaron Maier-Carretero’s narrative oil paintings dance between realism and caricature in their representation of the human form and condition as a way to understand and reconcile his relationship to latinidad, whiteness, Jewishness, and maleness. He delves into his own family as a source of inspiration, interrogating the occurrences of his upbringing, tapping into personal memories, journals, and photographs to critically examine the way in which his family has bought into a belief that to be white (or close to it) is to be more important, more beautiful, and worthy of love. Milad’s practice is motivated by a need to record and tell her story, and in doing so, assert stories like her own into the collective history. As a child in a multi-cultural immigrant family, Milad struggled to connect the history of her Egyptian and Honduran ancestry to her life as an American. For this reason, she deeply considers authors of history and how those stories are recorded and shared across generations and borders. Through her process in the studio, Milad models the recording and sharing of her own history on a personal scale. Born in Iran, Roya Farassat’s work is concerned with existential questions and the human condition woven from her personal history and rich cultural heritage. An experience of displacement shaped by complex political, social and religious forces continues to inform her identity and work. Rendered in heavy impasto, Farassat’s portrait series, The Forgotten Children, presents subjects fabricated from her imagination ¬and memory, outcasts of society whose distorted features convey a humanity lost and conjure a sense of foreignness. While her subjects may seem alien to us, their intentions, emotions, and desires are clear. These caricatures of the human psyche are disconcerting, but comical in their familiarity, too. In balancing discomfort with humor, she allows us to identify with these figures—a reminder for having empathy in a society that often neglects it. For further information, including images and previews, please call 213-395-0762, or email: gallery@luisdejesus.com.