LONG ISLAND CITY, NY.- MoMA PS1’s entrance features a new mural by Queens-based artist Esteban Cabeza de Baca (b. 1985, San Diego), now on view through spring 2027.
The mural, titled Ancestral Dreams (2026), weaves together Mesoamerican iconography, labor histories, and speculative futures, envisioning, for the artist, a dimension where advocacy for migrant communities is inseparable from the protection of the land. Cabeza de Baca’s work marks the second MoMA PS1 Plaza Mural, an annual commission juried by local cultural leaders, including curators, organizers, and artists. This year’s jury included Kaitlin García-Maestas (independent curator); José Esparza Chong Cuy (Executive Director and Chief Curator, Storefront for Art and Architecture); and Jaclyn Reyes (artist and co-founder, Little Manila Queens Bayanihan Arts).
Ancestral Dreams draws from syncretic iconography of resistance, faith, and survival. Black eagles connote the ongoing United Farm Workers movement. Prayer hands entwined with a rosary reflect tenets of Liberation Theology, which originated in Latin America in the late 1960s and drew from Marxist thought to address poverty and other forms of oppression. Cabeza de Baca interweaves these images with environmental abstractions and Mesoamerican symbology, such as a blue headdress referencing the Blue Corn God of Tenochtitlan and Maya stelae, and the “Three Sisters” (corn, beans and squash), deities of sustenance central to Indigenous cultures across the Americas.
Layered with nods to Mexican Muralism and the Works Progress Administration, Cabeza de Baca engages the mural as a site of social advocacy. The mural uses symbology to propose futures of community action that have been imagined across cultures and timelines. It pays homage to migrant families, as well as artists from 5Pointz, the legendary graffiti and muralism site formerly located across from MoMA PS1, as figures climb up a giant hand that carries them towards a better future.
Esteban Cabeza de Baca is a painter who lives and works between Long Island City, New York, and the Southwestern United States. His work has been exhibited at venues such as MoCA Tucson (2023), The Drawing Center (2019), the Royal Palace Amsterdam (2018), the Yale University School of Sacred Music (2017), and the Leroy Neiman Art Center (2014, 2015), among others. Cabeza de Baca has received numerous grants and awards, including a Civitella Ranieri Visual Art Fellowship (2024), a NYFA Painting Fellowship (2021), a Henk en Victoria de Heus Fellowship (2018), a Stokroos Foundation Grant (2017), a Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program Award (2014), a Stern Fellowship (2013), and a Robert Gamblin Painting Grant (2013). He received a BFA from Cooper Union, School of the Arts in 2010 and an MFA from Columbia University in 2014.
MoMA PS1 Plaza Mural: Esteban Cabeza de Baca is organized by Elena Ketelsen González, Associate Curator.
