Gallery closed for installation until October 2, 2026
Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos 1817 Soquel Avenue Santa Cruz, CA 95062
November 7, 2026-March 7, 2027
By appointment. Email aalejan2@ucsc.edu
On view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos, Elevar La Cultura, a powerful public installation by artist Victor “Marka27” Quiñonez, reimagines the Mayan pyramid as a symbol of cultural resilience, using portable coolers, spiritual and cultural objects to celebrate the creativity and survival of immigrant communities. Elevar La Cultura stands as both a monument and an offering, fusing street aesthetics, ancestral iconography, and contemporary storytelling into a powerful visual language that uplifts the voices too often left out of mainstream narratives.
Elevar La Cultura is organized alongside Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá at the IAS, in partnership with The Center for Art & Advocacy and as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to contribute to the unfolding collective story and alternative imagining underway to create a future free of prisons.
Victor “Marka27” Quiñonez is a renowned visual artist working at the intersections of contemporary art, graffiti, vinyl toys, fashion and design, and art activism. His work is inspired by the empowerment of marginalized communities and the fight for representation. Internationally recognized for his dynamic visual language, Marka27 has exhibited globally and collaborated with major brands while creating landmark public art in cities across the U.S. He is a Frieze Los Angeles Impact Prize winner (2025) and a Right of Return and Art for Justice Fellow (2023, 2024), using his platform to amplify narratives around immigration, incarceration, and identity. Through his art, Marka27 invites viewers into a vibrant space where heritage and urban expression powerfully coexist.
Photos of Elevar La Cultura by Gary Pivot and Lee Daniel Tran. Artist portrait by Tim Correira.
