Guadalupe Rosales lands first LACMA residency via Instagram

Guadalupe Rosales (b. 1980, Boyle Heights) has been awarded the first-ever artist residency by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), recognizing her Instagram-based archival project Veteranas and Rucas. Rosales, daughter of Mexican immigrants, began her career exploring youth cultures in Los Angeles through themes of trauma, memory, and nostalgia, often drawing on her own adolescence amid gang violence and minority rights protests. In 2015, she launched Veteranas and Rucas, inviting users to submit photos of 1990s Los Angeles parties—private homes, clubs, raves—amassing thousands of images that now form a vast archive. The page, with over 120,000 followers, highlights Mexican-American and other minority communities, aiming to affirm their American identity. Rosales joins a wave of contemporary artists using Instagram as a medium, including Amalia Ulman (Excellences and Perfections), Maurizio Cattelan (The Single Post), and Daniel Arsham (280,000 followers). The residency marks LACMA's first such engagement with an Instagram-native artist.