Carlos Flores
Programs Manager & Community Organizer,
Chicago Art Department
Carlos Flores is an installation artist, radical community arts organizer, curator, and flower farmer based in the Archer Heights neighborhood of Chicago. Both his visual practice and organizing work center around creating space for connection, generation, and care to take place. At Chicago Art Department (CAD), he leads the organization’s residencies and exhibitions, supporting twenty civically minded artists and over 100 free exhibitions and programs annually. CAD residents are activists, educators, and community leaders of their own.
Carlos leverages collaboration to engage broad audiences in critical dialogue to reimagine places of power and systematic erasure, cultivating cross-cultural healing between BIPOC communities.
Carlos’s creative labor draws from his experiences growing up as a queer Latinx immigrant on the Southwest Side of Chicago. Through his work, he brings viewers face-to-face with issues of environmental justice, displacement, and race. He has exhibited his work at the Hyde Park Art Center, Heaven Gallery, Mana Contemporary, and the National Museum of Mexican Art and has received recognition from 3Arts, the Luminarts Cultural Foundation, and the Andy Warhol Foundation. Carlos is also the recipient of the 2023 Chicago Park District’s Anchor Curatorial Residency and a fellow of the 2023 National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures Leadership Institute.