Eric Perez

Eric Perez (he/him) is a first-generation American, United States Marine Corps veteran, artist, and educator in the city of Chicago. Primarily a photographer, his work focuses on the impacts and experience of being a Marine during his two deployments as part of the Global War on Terror. Digging into hard-drives containing images taken during his service, Perez embeds typed histories into digital image code which the computer renders as glitched images. He views these colorful error patterns as stand-ins for his platoonmates, experiences, fears, and traumas which he then transposes onto other forms of media.

Perez earned his Associates in Art at Triton College in 2016 and graduated summa cum laude from the University of Illinois at Chicago with a Bachelors in Fine Art in 2019. Soon after, he was recruited to join the Floating Museum, an art collective that deployed him across the city installing and documenting their various public art projects. His role at the organization grew and he currently serves as Project Manager. In 2022, he was selected to be a National Endowment for the Humanities Veteran Fellow as part of the Emerging Veterans Art Movement. His work has been shown in UIC’s 2019 BFA thesis show, Triton.