photo by Casper Yen
Andrius Alvarez-Backus (b. Warwick, NY) is an interdisciplinary artist working across sculpture, drawing, and painting. Through the transformation of everyday objects, he amplifies their poetic connotations to evoke personal allegories of intimacy, embodiment, and memory. Using mixed media assemblage, his practice interrogates how desire bridges beauty and abjection, and how the semiotics of materials convey cultural meanings.
He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (2023), and his Master of Fine Arts from Columbia University (2025). His work has been shown internationally at the Wallach Art Gallery, Fragment Gallery, SK Gallery, Plato Gallery, Chelsea Walls, Black Brick Project, the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition, and The Blanc, among others. His first museum solo exhibition, "Desastre!," was on view at the Fitchburg Art Museum from June through August 2023, where his work is also included in the permanent collection. Recent honors include the Richard Lewis Bloch Memorial Prize, the Martin A. Rothenberg Travel Fellowship, the D'Arcy Hayman Scholarship, and the Quinta Carolina Scholarship. His work has been featured in The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, and The Boston Art Review. He was the inaugural Nicholas Dahl Visiting Artist at the Provincetown Art Association & Museum in 2025
Alvarez-Backus is currently an artist-in-residence at Smack Mellon 2025-2026, and serves as the Communications Manager at Queer|Art, the New York City-based nonprofit empowering LGBTQ+ artists across generations and disciplines.