Oaxacan Dreamscapes: The Vivid and Fantastical Worlds of Karla Wong

Mexican artist Karla Wong creates vivid oil paintings that braid together Oaxacan influences, her Chinese heritage and her experience as a trans woman living between the U.S. and Mexico. Born in Veracruz, Karla spent much of her adolescence and early adulthood in Oaxaca, where she studied law before working for a decade as a forensic and witness sketch artist. Reconstructing faces from descriptions demanded a particular kind of imagination, an experience that continues to inform the fantastical figures she paints today.

Her richly detailed compositions feature elaborately dressed women, skeletal figures, birds, alebrijes and strange hybrid creatures. Victorian-inspired garments mingle with traditional Oaxacan clothing, surrounded by checkerboard floors, floating balloons, twisting staircases and mysterious archways that suggest dreamlike passages between different worlds.

Her latest body of work is presented in Journeys of Being, a solo exhibition at Chicago’s Intuit Art Museum, on view through January 10, 2027.

For more of Karla Wong’s work, follow her on Instagram and learn more about the Journeys of Being exhibition at the Intuit Art Museum.

More art on the grid via Colossal