Rate My Professor Alejandra Abad

Alejandra Abad serves as Assistant Professor of digital media production in the School of Communication and Multimedia Studies within Florida Atlantic University’s Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters. She earned an MFA in Interdisciplinary Media Art Practices from the University of Colorado, conducted architectural studies at Florida Atlantic University, and studied Film/Video/New Media/Animation at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Born in Caracas, Venezuela, Abad is an interdisciplinary visual media artist and educator whose practice explores belonging and mutual compassion as key elements of collective wellness. Employing layering, abstraction, and light, she crafts new landscapes that connect to place, family, and community. Her style draws from architectural influences, anticolonial movements, international surrealism, and magical realism, intertwined with personal experiences in new spaces. Abad utilizes analog and digital processes to project moving images in public spaces, grounded in a pedagogy of care, addressing environmental futures and the implications of the anthropocene.

Her notable works include "The Drying West" (2023), a site-specific installation at Understudy in Denver commenting on species endangerment from water diversion and shortages; "Un País Olvidado: Reliquias de Vigencia / Forgotten Country: Relics of Agency" (2021-2023), a multimedia installation exhibited at the University of Colorado Art Museum, Arbor Institute, CU Denver Experience Gallery, and FAU Schmidt Gallery, delving into oral histories of the Venezuelan exodus; and "VIDA" (2021-2023), an animation screened at Meow Wolf, Supernova Digital Animation Festival, Buell Theater, Sie FilmCenter, and the Denver Art Museum. Additional projects encompass "Beyond Sound" (2023) at Side Stories Film Festival, highlighting a dance studio for the deaf, hard of hearing, and others; "Bodies of Water" at Museo de las Americas; "BIOME vs BORDERS" at Union Hall; and "Our Wishes," a participatory installation at Boulder Library with projections onto the Denver Clock Tower. In 2024, Abad co-authored with Dr. Steve Jones “Lexicon de Plantas (Lexicon of Plants): Cyclicality and Participatory Community Experience in an Immersive Animated Installation,” published in the Proceedings of the Expanded 2024: Conference on Animation and Interactive Art. Her expertise spans interdisciplinary media art practices, digital media, storytelling, moving image, video art, installation, and animation, bridging arts and sciences for innovative human expression.