"NOT EVERYTHING THAT IS FACED CAN BE CHANGED, BUT NOTHING CAN BE CHANGED UNTIL IT IS FACED"
- JAMES BALDWIN
Alex M. Sorapuru is a New Orleans-based visual artist and architectural designer whose practice bridges abstract portraiture, spatial theory, and cultural memory. His work combines color blocking, contour drawing, and layered transparency to examine the complexities of identity, homecoming, and belonging. A graduate of Louisiana State University with a Bachelor of Architecture, Sorapuru’s design training informs his approach to composition, structure, and negative space. His portrait work reimagines family, community, and interior life, often using fragments of memory and personal archive to build emotionally charged, open-ended narratives.
His first solo exhibition, I Never Learned to Swim (2018), marked an early exploration of abstraction and personal mythology. In recent years, he took part in the Past, Present, and Afro-Futurism exhibition at The Front and was selected for a Replenish Residency at A Studio in the Woods, where he completed and displayed a multi-layered reflection on intimacy, memory, and returning home. Sorapuru’s work has been shown in Colorado, Virginia, and Louisiana where it continues to evolve as a meditation on absence, perception, and shifts in visual culture.