Ernesto Cabral

Ernesto Cabral de Luna is a Mexican lens-based artist that completed the BFA Photography program at Toronto’s OCAD University. Guided by the image saturation of daily life, Ernesto's work consists of appropriating archival imagery – from family photographs, to postcards, player cards and vintage advertisements. His work centers around altering perception through image manipulation – providing new ways to experience recognizable imagery in unconventional manners and outside of their intended purpose.

Ernesto constantly questions the sustainability of photography and the ubiquity of the image, along with the role and legacy of photos used to record history, sell products and document our lives. Emphasizing the multi-dimensionality and materiality of photography, his work centers around altering perception, providing new ways to experience images that have been preconceived with a specific purpose and way of viewing.

Bridging the nostalgic with the contemporary, my work explores themes of identity and representation – focusing on memory, absence and displacement – drawing from his experience as an immigrant in an effort to relate to people who feel like they are from two worlds in one sense and from neither in another. A recipient of OCAD’s 2021 Wendy Coburn Art and Social Change Scholarship, he has exhibited at Ada Slaight Gallery, Xpace Cultural Center and Riverdale HubGallery. Ernesto was selected for the Toronto Raptors’ 2022 Welcome Toronto Creators Program. Ernesto will be exhibiting his project "Mining For Some Sort of Continuity" at Xpace this May as a apart of Soctiabank's CONTACT festival.