Skinchangers: Begotten of my Flesh is the exhibition catalog that accompanies Rubén Ulises Rodríguez Montoya’s first solo museum exhibition, which took place at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (moCa). Skinchangers weaves the story of a vampire forced to reconstitute its body from space debris following the destruction of the last spaceship leaving an apocalypse-ravaged Earth. Sculpted from detritus and discarded materials scavenged from the US-Mexico border, Rodríguez Montoya’s artworks are shape-shifting creatures that feed off each other. Rooted in speculative fiction, this exhibition explores how violence erases and eradicates communities of color.

The publication, exhibition, and related programming are part of Toby's Prize, biannual artist award sponsored by Toby Devan Lewis (1934–2022). The exhibition was curated by Lauren Leving and was on view at moCa from June 28 through December 29, 2024.

Rubén Ulises Rodríguez Montoya is an artist based in Mexico City. Montoya received his MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2020. He creates sculptures that are fantastic beings centered around self-made mythologies and social issues concerning border culture, abjection, adaptation, and mestizaje. Montoya’s practice is influenced by Speculative Fiction, Nahualismo, Sci-Fi, and the labor of his family. His work hybridizes and creates parallels between land, human, and animal as a way to investigate the process in which violence eradicates, erases, and erodes communities of color. In fall 2025, he will mount a solo exhibition of new work at ICA San Diego. Recent exhibitions include Flow States – LA TRIENAL 2024 (El Museo de Barrio, 2024–2025), an untitled group exhibition (Artists Space, 2024), Perhaps the Truth (Ballroom Marfa, 2023–2024), La Casa Erosionada [The Eroded House] (Anahuacalli Museum, 2023), James Webb and The Thestral Born Without a Vertebrae (Sargent’s Daughters, 2022), and were-:Nenetech Forms (MOCA Tucson, 2021–2022).

Lauren Leving is a curator and writer based in Chicago, IL. Her work explores how creative practice can expand institutionally rooted understandings of access. She is ACRE’s Exhibitions Director (Chicago, IL) and Associate Curator for the 2025 California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art (Costa Mesa, CA). Previously, she served as Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art (moCa) Cleveland (OH). Leving was co-curator of Everlasting Plastics in the US Pavilion during the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale, which traveled to the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, PA. While at moCa Cleveland, Leving organized numerous projects including a large scale textile commission by Aram Han Sifuentes entitled Messages to Authorities (Go Away!), Nina Chanel Abney: Big Butch Synergy, and Don’t mind if I do, a group exhibition stewarded by Finnegan Shannon. Leving holds an MA in Museum and Exhibition Studies from the University of Illinois Chicago and a BA from Tulane University (New Orleans, LA). She was an AAMC 2024 Propel Program Fellow and a 2025 Critic/Curator-in-Residence at Art Omi.

Marco Antonio Flores is an art curator and historian of modern and contemporary art of the United States and Latin America. He curated the exhibitions Imaginary Activism: The role of the artist beyond the art world (University of California, Berkeley, 2015), staring at the sun (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, 2019), Me Llaman Calle: The Monumental Art of Juana Alicia (San Francisco Arts Commission Galleries, 2023), Cenote de Sueños: The Art of Juana Alicia (Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, 2024) and House of Valdez (AltaMed Art Collection, 2025). Flores received a BA and an MA from the University of California, Berkeley, and a second MA from the Williams Graduate Program in the History of Art at the Clark Art Institute. He has held fellowships from the National Museum of the American Latino, Ford Foundation, Clark Art Institute, and the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University. His research has been supported by grants from the Center for Race and Gender, Townsend Center for the Humanities, and Stanford Humanities Center.

Octavio Gómez Rivero is an artist who lives, works, and writes in Mexico City. His ideas developed under the anarchist movement in Mexico. In 2023, he presented a solo exhibition Lengua Vítrea (Union Space, Mexico City). Notable collective exhibitions include Trópico de Asfalto [Tropics of Asphalt] (Rosario Sánchez de Lozada Municipal Gallery, Querétaro, 2024), La Casa Erosionada [The Eroded House] (Anahuacalli Museum, 2023), and No hay refugio en un cielo sin estrellas  [No shelter in a starless sky] (General Expenses, Mexico City, 2023). In addition to being an artist, he writes art criticism for various Mexican media outlets. Currently, Gómez Rivero is part of the art and critical pedagogy collective C.R.N.0 in Mexico City, with whom he conducts an ongoing seminar on Art and Cosmopolitics.

Laura G. Gutiérrez is the Associate Professor of Latinx and Mexican Performance and Visual Studies in the Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies at the University of Texas at Austin (UT), where she also serves as Associate Dean for Community Engagement and Public Practice in the College of Fine Arts. She has received support from the Getty Research Institute and from UT’s Provost Author’s Fellows program for her current book, Binding Intimacies in Contemporary Queer Latinx Performance and Visual Art. She is the author of Performing Mexicanidad: Vendidas y Cabareteras on the Transnational Stage, winner of a Modern Languages Association book award, and has published essays, chapters, and reviews on performance, visual arts, film, and video art. As Artistic Director of OUTsider (Austin, TX), Gutiérrez curates and programs the organization’s annual festival.

Christal Pérez is a Los Angeles–based artist and writer. Her work looks at the intersection between race and ecology in order to destabilize notions of what constitutes the human. She received her BA in Art from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2019, and received her MA in the History of Art with an emphasis on Caribbean Studies from Williams College in 2022. 

Rossen Ventzislavov is a philosopher and cultural critic focusing on aesthetics, architectural theory, literature, popular music, and performance art. Born in Pernik, Bulgaria, he has been living in the United States since 1999. His work has appeared in the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Deleuze Studies, Contemporary Aesthetics, X-tra, the British Journal of Aesthetics, New Literary History and the Journal of Popular Music Studies. Ventzislavov is the recipient of a Curriculum Diversification Grant from the American Society for Aesthetics. He has been a member of the Encounter performance art collective since 2014 and is currently Professor of Philosophy at Woodbury University.

MJ Balvanera is a graphic designer born and raised in CDMX, Mexico. She believes that graphic design can be more than just a series of arbitrary visual standards, a fun means of individual and cultural expression. The main focus of her work is publishing.

Andrea García Flores is an editorial and graphic designer from Ciudad Madero, Tamaulipas, Mexico. Her practice focuses on feminism, self-publishing, and teaching workshops that integrate DIY publishing and disseminate independent editorial practices. She believes in editorial design as a tool for resistance, collaboration, and community building, exploring alternative publishing methods beyond traditional formats.

For more than 50 years, the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (moCa) has played a vital role in Cleveland’s cultural landscape. moCa is a conduit and catalyst for creativity and inspiration, offering exhibitions and programs that provide public value and make meaning of the art and ideas of our time.