Alina uses photography and sculpture to empower their collaborators in the LGBTQIA+ community. As they explore the social codes and cues within this group, they depict the common experiences of Queer individuals. Alina interweaves concepts of vulnerability, identity affirmation, balance and care within relationships, and found communities in their work. Alina’s delicacy when collaborating with friends and strangers shows their ability to create spaces that welcome authenticity of LGBTQIA+ experiences.
Often maneuvering between varying perspectives of viewers, Alina balances the shifting weight of representation, education, and normalization. Their photographs depict the ways that the LGBTQIA+ community wants to be seen leave a multidimensional impression on those that access their work. Alina is committed to generating ethical making processes and maintaining the comfort of their collaborators.
As a recent BFA Photography and Design graduate from Lesley University, Alina has earned the Lesley Art and Design's 2020 Photography Award and the 2022 EDIJ Rising Artist Award.
They have exhibited work in the Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, Cambridge Art Association, Gallery 263, Gallery South, Panopticon Gallery, and Roberts Gallery. They are currently the Director’s Assistant at Gallery Kayafas, have taught at Lesley University and the Community Art Center, and helped pilot an Early College Program at Lesley University for
first-generation high school students.
Alina Balseiro is a photographer in Lesley University’s BFA Photo program whose subjects are often times friends, family and members of the LGBTQ+ community. They document a variety of vulnerable human experiences and honor the power that images hold in inclusive identity representation. Alina translates the emotional world into a physical state through directive gaze, complicated gestures and performative portrait photography. They elevate instances of supportive balance and care to navigate raw, interpersonal relationships. Through challenging the role of comfort, intimacy, gender, sexuality and human desire in authenticity, Alina’s work is motivated by their curiosity in deep connections with the people around them. Alina has exhibited at Art House Gallery, Cambridge Art Association, Gallery South, and LITM Gallery. They were a finalist for Photographer’s Forum: Best of High School and College Photography in 2018.