SUR BIENNIAL
Institutional Acquisition: No te Caigas (Don't Fall)
Exploring the delicate balance of socio-economic division and physical tension, Noé Piña’s installation No te Caigas (Don't Fall) has found a permanent home within the AltaMed Foundation’s historic art collection. First curated by Yolanda Gonzalez for the Sur Biennial (Interconnected: Ancestral Environments), the precarious, see-saw-like structure represents the grit and weight of first-generation American labor. By joining AltaMed’s permanent archive of over 4,000 works, the sculpture contributes to a legacy of cross-cultural healing, community pride, and contemporary Chicano visual storytelling.
Ancestral Environments, Curated by Yolanda Gonzalez, Rio Hondo College Art Gallery, 2023
Biography & Institutional Collections
Noé Piña is a multi-disciplinary Mexican-American fine artist and educator based in the Los Angeles area. As a first-generation American whose upbringing was split between Southern California and Guadalajara, Mexico, his visual concepts are deeply informed by childhood memories of a brick manufacturing town in Jalisco. His mixed-media sculptures and immersive installations explore the themes of balance, socio-economic division, labor disparity, and physical tension, using structural objects such as terracotta bricks, reclaimed wood planks, and nails.
Institutional Permanent Collections
Piña’s acclaimed mixed-media sculptural installation, "No te Caigas (Don't Fall)", is held in the permanent corporate art collection of the AltaMed Foundation. Originally curated by Yolanda Gonzalez for the Sur Biennial exhibition (Interconnected: Ancestral Environments), the piece features a precarious, see-saw-like beam balancing on stacked, hand-formed terracotta bricks. It now stands alongside prominent Chicano, Latino, and Mexican-American artists in the prestigious AltaMed Art Collection, serving their mission to integrate culturally resonant fine art into therapeutic community healthcare environments.
Musical Projects & Underground Collaborations
Extending his creative output into underground audio engineering, Piña is a longtime collaborator with musician Juan Martinez. Rooted in the 1990s Los Angeles "Rock Angelino" movement, their ongoing creative partnership encompasses two contemporary electronic music projects: Mercy Form (focusing on industrial and Electronic Body Music/EBM) and Aether Device (centering on atmospheric darkwave and synth-pop).