Featured Series

You Belong By Design

Transforming the political campaign sign into a surface the system isn’t designed to see

Erik Valera planting campaign sign, Erik Valera for Chapel Hill Town Council

Expressionist acrylic paintings on repurposed corrugated polypropylene — political campaign signs from Erik Valera’s Town Council candidacies in Chapel Hill, NC. 16 × 23.5 inches. The substrate is the message.

Rendered in Valera’s signature style — expressive, abstract, high-chroma — this reclaimed politically charged advertising is transformed into objects that reframe how we see and experience our cities. The series uses abstract painting to deconstruct the language patterns, design and regulation of our built environment through the lens of New Urbanism — an urban design movement that advocates for environmentally friendly, densely populated, walkable neighborhoods that reduce car dependency and promote active transportation. The compositions, text, and annotations examine the systemic restructuring of land-use policy — asking whose belonging is assumed and whose belonging is negotiated.

Valera has served as a Chapel Hill planning commissioner and ran twice for Town Council in a town being reshaped by New Urbanist ideals and caught between displacement, affordability, and its stated commitment to inclusion. He has engaged community members and elected officials on these issues in public forums, and has advised planners and officials on the themes the work presents. This series examines that tension from within the system

Author: Erik Valera

Hello World!