Today we’d like to introduce you to Christopher Nájera.
Hi Christopher, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I started making art pretty naturally when I was younger, over time it became less of a hobby and more of a way for me to understand myself and the world around me. As a kid I would sell my drawings to my classmates, and was obsessed with anime, anything magical, swords, the future and robots. I haven’t really stopped making since, it’s become almost compulsive. Making is my way of understanding the world and manifesting a better future.
I currently just finished my MFA, and throughout school my practice slowly shifted from making images to creating installations and environments that people can physically move through and experience. A lot of my pieces raise questions on perception, transformation, memory, and the relationship between the material and healing. I work with drawing, fabric, steel, light, and layered translucent materials, so the pieces often feel somewhere between drawing, sculpture, and architecture. I’m interested in how art can create moments where people slow down and reconsider what they think is fixed or real.
Over the past few years I’ve been fortunate to show work in several exhibitions and spaces in Texas and beyond, and each opportunity has helped me refine both the work and my understanding of why I make it. I think one big shift for me has been realizing that art isn’t just about producing objects, it’s about creating experiences, relationships, and spaces for reflection.
At the same time, my background and personal experiences deeply shape the work. I’m interested in care, healing, devotion, and the ways people carry memory and emotion in their bodies and environments. So even when the work becomes conceptual or installation-based, I still want it to feel human and emotionally accessible.
Right now I feel like I’m entering a new chapter where the work is expanding outward, not just into galleries, but into conversations, public engagement, and larger environments where people can genuinely encounter it. I am excited to see where this takes not only me, but more importantly the artwork.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I am very blessed, I wake up everyday and I get to create what is in my head. I will usually do commissions and quite honestly, those are a little hard for me, I see how successful my pieces are when they are coming from my own psyche. I have been given many opportunities to make, and have received so much love, so in that way, it feels like a smooth road.
There have definitely been some struggles along the way, funding the practice is the biggest struggle, making enough to pay my bills and the space where I make. It can be overwhelming not having a consistent income coming in, and when I do have one, it takes over a lot of my time and I can’t be in the flow state as much.
Being in grad school taught me a lot, one is how to get into the flow state easier. Keeping your hands busy, making a little bit everyday, help keep the momentum. Artistically a big struggle for me was placing a lot of authority onto my pieces and not letting them exist and manifest organically. I struggled with abstraction quite a bit, that process of learning to understand what the piece wanted and as the artist, our job is to respond accordingly. I have become much better at that part of the practice, learning to listen. In some ways, you could say it’s the idea of letting go of perfectionism, or getting out of the way, to let the piece become what it wants to become. That was a huge struggle I recently overcame, and honestly, I am a little giddy at the thought of making consistently from that place from now on.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I mostly like to draw and make objects, every now and again I will dabble with painting. I have created murals in the past, I have a few around DFW that I am proud of. However, the pieces I look to the most with endearment are the ones that mean something to just myself and aren’t so much for the public. I have shown a few of them sure, but they almost feel like children.
I think the reason I am so fond of certain pieces is because they might signal a big transition for me creatively, or I can see and feel the intention behind making them. A lot of my work use to focus on trauma, healing it, understanding it, what do I do with it. I am not so much focusing on trauma anymore, maybe I have healed enough personally to where I don’t feel like I need to express myself in that way. It is an evolution though, now I am questioning what do our relationships to each other look like, feel like. Sometimes it feels as though that is my job, envision a world that others can’t yet envision.
Would the world be a better place if you had a relationship with bees, and understood their pollination patterns. What about respecting the land that you walk on, what would happen if you spoke to Earth. There is a level of compassion and empathy that is developed when you are in relationship with other beings that you normally aren’t even thinking about. I believe that there are relationships outside of yourself that you are missing out on, and if you were to be present with that, what might that do to the connection you have with yourself.
Do you have any advice for those just starting out?
Yes! I have tons of advice, I used to be a middle school teacher. Approach art making as a thing you love to do, not as a business you want to create because you saw someone online with that life and it seemed cool. Whatever you think success is, it will come if you are honoring the artwork first. There were many years of showing in coffee shops, parks, apartments before I started showing in other spaces. The goal isn’t the shows, or the awards or the accolades, it’s the fact that you get to wake up everyday and have the ability to make.
If you want practical advice, go to all the shows and be honest about it. Don’t go to a show to get something out of someone, if they have a big name and you think they can recommend you for something, a lot of people can see through that. Go to art shows because you see what that artist is doing and believe in it, because you like it. If referrals, networking comes out of that, cool, amazing, but try to be genuine.
In the studio, something I wish I knew when I was first starting out is understanding problems. As creatives, we all have problems we are working with. How do I get this effect in a photograph, how do I render this or that, how do I think about space. Before grad school, I was overwhelmed at the amount of problems I had, I couldn’t really organize myself at the time. Now, thanks to my mentors, something that seemed so easy was really hard for me. I tackle one creative problem at a time. For example, “This paper that I am working on is too slick, so let me move onto and try another piece of paper that is a little rougher. I am going to draw the same thing on both, and compare how the paper being the only thing that is different handles the drawing.” Once you solve that problem, go to the next, there is no rush.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.christophernajera.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christophernajera/
