WERC Alvarez is a conceptual artist and muralist whose work decodes empire through commercial glyphs, sacred codes, and ritual interventions. Raised in Ciudad Juárez, and El Paso TX. on the US/Mexico border, he weaves ancestral cosmology with capitalist iconography to transform public life into a site of ceremony.
Beginning with graffiti in the early 1990s and evolving through mentorship in Chicano muralism, Alvarez’s practice has expanded from city walls into immersive systems of public ritual. His work merges performance, sculpture, and codified painting, reimagining public art as a sacred commons, where ancestral cosmologies, vendor economies, and capitalist symbols collide in acts of resistance and renewal.
His evolving body of work explores systems of lineage, exchange, and timekeeping, centering immigrant labor, urban ecologies, and Indigenous calendars. Everyday materials become portals of ancestral knowledge, memory, and resistance, revealing how the ordinary encodes systems of power, labor, and cultural memory.
Alvarez has been commissioned by institutions and brands including NASA, Bulgari, Pantone, Toyota, Google Play, Modelo USA, Audible, Lufthansa, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. His work has been funded by the Gelman Foundation and supported through residencies at Powerhouse Arts and other artist programs. Public artworks include the 2023 Aplomado Falcon mural, recognized for its cultural and ecological significance.
