On view: April 26—July 19, 2025

Opening Reception: May 2, 2025 | 6–9pm

Through an interdisciplinary practice that includes experimental films, Luis Arnías explores his experience as an immigrant person of Afro-Caribbean descent living in America, examining the connections between his own life and Black and African diasporic consciousness. Originally from Venezuela, Arnías currently lives and works in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Boston. He uses 16mm film to visualize everyday life, investigating the conceptual layers of neighborhood, wilderness, borders, and boundaries through the lens of race, immigration, and identity. Subjects range from his home life, where his family participates in the making of his films, to contested social spaces for communities of color in Boston, to street life in Brazil, Senegal, Venezuela, and elsewhere. 

The solo exhibition Slow Loops presents two recent films by Arnías, Bisagras (2024) and Noise Cloud (work in progress), in addition to sculpture and drawings that illuminate the films’ thematic connections. Bisagras, is an impressionistic experience of Arnías’s visits to the House of Slaves in Gorée Island, Senegal, and the port of Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, major sites of the transatlantic slave trade where the artist imagines his ancestors’ history. Noise Cloud is an experimental film that Arnías started during the pandemic, finding inspiration in the shared spaces of public parks and how they became heightened grounds for protest, partying, and leisure across racial lines in a time of crisis. The two films come together in his enduring study of Black life in all of its exuberance and expansiveness, as well as the slow and ongoing effects of structural racism, colonization, and the slave trade across locations, contexts, and time.

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This exhibition is supported in part by Wagner Foundation. ‘Slow Loops: Luis Arnías’ was first shown at Wagner Foundation between October 11, 2024–March 28, 2025. It was organized by Abigail Satinsky, Program Officer & Curator, Arts & Culture. The BCA Mills Gallery presentation is coordinated by BCA Visual Arts Team.

Luis Arnías is a filmmaker from Venezuela who currently lives and works in Boston, MA. In 2009, he completed the diploma program at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and in 2020 he received his Masters in Film/Video from Milton Avery Graduate School at Bard College. He has screened at New York Film Festival, TIFF, Punto de Vista, Berlin Critics’ Week (Woche Der Kritik) and BlackStar Film Festival. He was a Fellow at The Film Study Center at Harvard University, the recipient of the Herb Alpert/MacDowell Fellowship 2022 and most recently 2023 Boston Artadia Awardee.