Editorial
Info
Ruta de la amistad
Photography by Karla Ximena Cerón
Writen by Matías Tina
80 pages
4/4
14 × 43 cm (5.5 × 17 in)
Staple Bound
First edition October 2024
Edition of 200
Decolonizing Non-Violent Communication
Written by meenachi
Edited by Nicole Kelly
Illustrations by Hana Ward
92 pages
2/2
14 × 21.6 cm (5.5 × 8.5 in)
Spiral Bound
First edition, March 2019
200 copies
Second edition, June 2019
500 copies
Third edition, December 2019
700 copies
Fourth edition, March 2020
1,750 copies
Fórmulas Colaborativas
Written by Cocina Colaboratorio
Edited by Lucía Pérez-Volkow, Elizabeth Guerrero Molina and Tanya M. González Martínez
Illustrations by Jesper Buursink and
Moriz Oberberger
124 pages
1/1 and 4/4
14 × 21.6 cm (5.5 × 8.5 in)
Spiral Bound
First edition, October 2025
200 copies
Second edition, March 2026
400 copies
Tamarind
Adee Roberson, with texts by Essence Harden, Treva Ellison, and Adee Roberson
Edited by Sarah Williams
40 pages
4/4
14 × 21.6 cm (5.5 × 8.5 in)
Saddle-stitched
First edition, May 2019
200 copies
Tales from Santo Domingo
Independant project on speculative identity formed by a series of 10 letter pressed business cards made in Santo Domingo, CDMX each representing a fictional object such as a fountain, a church, or a brick.
Series of 10 business cards
9 × 5 cm (3.5 × 2 in)
Unbound
First edition, August 2017
Unique Object
Espectadora específica
Text by Tonatiuh López
84 pages
7/7
12 × 19 cm (4.72 × 7.48 in)
Saddle-stitched
First edition, May 2025
200 copies
Interlace
Written by Charles Moore
72 pages
2/2
13.5 × 21 cm (5.3 × 8.2 in)
Staple Bound
First edition, September 2025
300 copies
Tenderness
Written by Annika Hasteen-Izora
72 pages
4/4
12 × 19 cm (4.72 × 7.48 in)
Spiral Bound
First edition, November 2021
750 copies
Art
Info
Objects of Obsession
Color pencil on Mohawk paper
18 × 12 in
Signed recto
Framed
For sale
Objects of Obsession is a series of naive color pencil drawings depicting the objects and rituals that have absorbed MJ Balvanera’s addictive energy in sobriety: shopping, spending money, eating ice cream by the pint, sex, Concerta, and Diet Coke.
The drawings turn these everyday pleasures into charged objects of desire, compulsion, and consumption. Their deliberately naive quality gives them the immediacy of a personal archive, while their accumulation points to the persistent urge to seek pleasure, stimulation, and escape.
Tati
Acrylic paint, gouache, and oil pastel on canvas
70 × 100 cm (27.6 × 39.4 in)
Signed verso
For sale
Tati depicts the table where MJ Balvanera and her siblings gathered every Saturday at their grandmother’s home. The table becomes a portrait of family memory, assembled through the objects that surrounded her: Tati’s ashtray, her favorite flowers, Talavera, a childhood ceramic dog, and the food that made her home feel distinctively hers. Each object carries a story, turning an ordinary domestic scene into a record of a life.
Ten years after Tati’s death, the painting reflects on inheritance beyond the material. Tati survived the Holocaust and arrived in Mexico as a child, eventually building a life very different from the one she was born into. What remains is carried through small things: flowers, food, humor, rituals, and the objects we choose to keep. Tati is a portrait of a grandmother through the everyday world she left behind.
Grant Me The Serenity
Acrylic paint, gouache, and oil pastel on canvas
96 × 116 cm (37.8 × 45.7 in)
Signed verso
Exhibited at Synonym Gallery
Grant Me the Serenity continues Higher Power’s exploration of the objects through which desire, comfort, and meaning enter everyday life. Here, the still life becomes more saturated, more manic, and more excessive. Diet Coke, coffee, flowers, glassware, and familiar domestic objects accumulate on the table as substitutes for a different kind of consumption. In sobriety, the search for a high does not necessarily disappear; it can migrate toward whatever is still available. The pleasure becomes permissible, even mundane, while the compulsion remains.
In Grant Me the Serenity, Balvanera plays with the strange contradiction of consuming without consuming. Diet Coke offers the ritual of indulgence without sugar, coffee offers stimulation, and the objects around them become charged with the desire for something more. The painting is intentionally seductive and slightly overwhelming, its saturated color and flattened domestic space drawing from the visual language of Jonas Wood while grounding the work in Los Angeles. The title invokes the Serenity Prayer, bringing the painting back to recovery and the ongoing negotiation between desire, restraint, and acceptance. What happens when the things we are allowed to have begin to carry the weight of the things we had to give up?
Higher Power (My Reflection)
Acrylic paint, gouache, and oil pastel on canvas
96 × 116 cm (37.8 × 45.7 in)
Signed verso
Exhibited at mooni
Higher Power is a series that celebrates the beauty and meaning found in everyday life. Through familiar objects—chairs, fruit, flowers, candles, books, and cheese—MJ Balvanera transforms the cotidiano into something both intimate and sublime. Drawn from her home, these objects carry personal significance, reflecting her background in editorial design, her connection to a higher power, and her family history.
In My Reflection, the bathroom becomes a site of tension and tenderness. A Dyson dryer rests near the water's edge—beauty ritual at the threshold of danger. A vase holds water in careful containment while the tub overflows with emotion. Around them: an accumulation of beauty products, most of them unused and barely understood, monuments to aspiration and overwhelm. Tulips, red and unruly, stand for her mother. The aesthetic seduction is real, as it always is in Balvanera's work—but so is the fear. Sobriety and fragility, held together in one still life.
Sillas Mexicanas
Soft pastel on cardboard
26 × 32 cm (12.59 x 10.23 in)
Signed verso
Exhibited at mooni
This series celebrates Mexican furniture design, specifically chairs, through color and abstraction. Each chair, all of which are Mexican designs, is carefully sketched out with soft pastels, examining each line that makes up the composition fo the piece.
Higher Power (My Books)
Acrylic paint, gouache, and oil pastel on canvas
70 × 90 cm (27.6 × 35.4 in)
Signed verso
Exhibited at mooni
Higher Power is a series that celebrates the beauty and meaning found in everyday life. Through familiar objects—chairs, fruit, flowers, candles, books, and cheese—MJ Balvanera transforms the cotidiano into something both intimate and sublime. Drawn from her home, these objects carry personal significance, reflecting her background in editorial design, her connection to a higher power, and her family history.
My Books is a portrait of a life in print. Each spine on the shelf—rendered with the flat, pattern-loving eye of Jonas Wood—carries the weight of a professional history and an emotional one. Zolo Press, Mariposa, Made in L.A., Axis: these are not decorations but markers, proof of a career built around books as objects, books as relationships. The cobalt dresser anchors the composition; the plant spills freely at the edge. A quiet still life about the labor of loving what you do.
Higher Power III
Acrylic paint, gouache, and oil pastel on canvas
70 × 100 cm (27.6 × 39.4 in)
Signed verso
Exhibited at Synonym Gallery
Higher Power is a series that celebrates the beauty and meaning found in everyday life. Through familiar objects—chairs, fruit, flowers, candles, books, and cheese—MJ Balvanera transforms the cotidiano into something both intimate and sublime. Drawn from her home, these objects carry personal significance, reflecting her background in editorial design, her connection to a higher power, and her family history.
Higher Power II
Acrylic paint on canvas
70 × 100 cm (27.6 × 39.4 in)
Signed verso
Exhibited at mooni
Higher Power is a series that celebrates the beauty and meaning found in everyday life. Through familiar objects—chairs, fruit, flowers, candles, books, and cheese—MJ Balvanera transforms the cotidiano into something both intimate and sublime. Drawn from her home, these objects carry personal significance, reflecting her background in editorial design, her connection to a higher power, and her family history.
Higher Power I
Acrylic paint on canvas
70 × 100 cm (27.6 × 39.4 in)
Signed verso
Exhibited at mooni
Higher Power is a series that celebrates the beauty and meaning found in everyday life. Through familiar objects—chairs, fruit, flowers, candles, books, and cheese—MJ Balvanera transforms the cotidiano into something both intimate and sublime. Drawn from her home, these objects carry personal significance, reflecting her background in editorial design, her connection to a higher power, and her family history.
Mesa Rancho
Inspired by tables and benches found in El Pueblo de Los Angeles, California, the Rancho Table is a functional and aesthic object that can be used for dining or as an oversized work table. The finishing is a high varnish paint over CNC cut plywood base.
Designed in collaboration with Jonathan Maghen.
Monobloc
Pine Chair
This take no the monobloc chair is an homage to artisan carpentars. Carved by maestro carpintero Jose Guadalupe, this chair is one of a kinda.
Martina Table
Named after my paternal grandmother, Martina is inspired by the rich colors and vibrant shapes of Mexican culture. This table is made of four thick wood cylinders, each a different hue, which hold the weight of the table cover. The finishing is a high varnish paint over CNC cut plywood base .
Concepción
Table
Named after my maternal grandmother, Concepción is inspired by the vibrant colors of flowers in Mexican landscapes. The finishing is a high varnish paint over CNC cut plywood base .