About

The art teacher entered the studio on the first day with an ice cream cone dripping down her hand and greeted the class by chomping a bite out of her cone. To everyone's surprise, the cone was an illusion made of clay and glaze. Looking back to that moment on the transformation of materials and subversion of common knowledge, Dominguez references this experience as the spark to his venture into the arts.

Dominguez sees art as a powerful universal language capable of  sharing experiences, values, and building empathy across communities to share perspectives of people who might not interact with each other otherwise. Having grown up commuting between the two cities of Phoenix and El Paso near the U.S and Mexico border as a youth, he witnessed the economic, environmental and class inequality of life in a populous desert city and an industrial city. His family’s history of and other brown families' history breathing poisoned carcinogenic air from an oil refinery’s smoke stack in Texas resulting in reproductive issues, brain damage and respiratory damage have greatly influenced his passion for work which advocates for equity and environment justice . 

His work seeks to generate discussion around the struggles people face in the contemporary world. Dominguez has always been drawn to the power of  storytelling in film, animation and mass media, naturally this led him to photography. Taking inspiration from current events, global issues and the Surrealist movement, his work seeks to challenge one's world view with symbolism and fantasy to explore new ways of living in our world. By working with painting, analog image making techniques and digital photography, he is able to share his point of view with the audiences.

Born in El Paso, Texas and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, Dominguez is a formally trained artist who will receive his Bachelors in Fine Arts from the Herberger Institute of Art and Design at Arizona State University in 2021. Joe currently resides in Phoenix