Rafael Caro (Rafiki)
Rafael Caro is a Midwest-based painter whose work draws from autobiography, family traditions, and the experience of separation across time and distance. Caro’s practice centers on cultural preservation while also exploring the fragile intersection where a first-generation family, striving toward traditional American values, clashes with the gritty realities of drugs, explicit media, and the graffiti counterculture. Working with wood, tile, plaster, and metal, he merges painting and construction to create richly textured surfaces inspired by urban architecture. His background as a commercial mural painter and carpenter informs a material-driven approach that blurs the line between observation, memory, and place.
