Espera (2017) is a short documentary of an intimate conversation between Quevedo and an ex-lover on the eve of their separation. As the end grows nearer the two men struggle to reconcile their desires with the reality of their lives. For this one-weekend presentation at Human Resources Los Angeles, Espera will be screened as a video installation playing on loop during regular hours (12pm-6pm). 

Espera (the audio version) premiered at First Look Festival at The Museum of the Moving Image (London, UK) in 2018 as a part of Radio Atlas. The audio work screened at Open City Documentary Festival (London, UK) , Locust Project (Miami, FL), and the Banjuoja Audio Festival (Vilnius, Lithuania). Espera is the winner of the 2018 Third Coast / Richard H. Driehaus Directors’ Choice Award and was shortlisted for the Hearsay International Audio Arts Festival ‘Celebrate’ and GanBéarla awards in 2019.

Espera at Human Resources Los Angeles is organized by Juan Manuel Silverio.

About the Artist

Sayre Quevedo is a documentary artist. He works across mediums to tell stories about intimacy, identity, and human relationships. His work has been featured on NPR, Marketplace, BBC Short Cuts, Love Me on the CBC, McSweeney’s and Radio Atlas. In 2018 his audio documentary short Espera received the Third Coast/RHDF Directors’ Choice Award and his audio documentary feature “The Quevedos” was nominated for a Best Audio Documentary award by the International Documentary Association (IDA). The following year he won the 2019 Third Coast/RHDF Gold Award for Best Documentary for “The Return.” That feature was also nominated for a Best Audio Documentary award by the IDA, his second nomination two years in a row. In 2022 Quevedo was nominated twice by the IDA for Best Stand-Alone Audio Documentary, winning the award for “Documenting a Death by Euthanasia.” Quevedo was the Fall 2019 Podcaster-In-Residence for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He was an Associate Producer for The Daily at The New York Times and NPR’s Latino USA, and a Producer for VICE News. He is currently an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Oral History Master of Arts program and New York University’s Journalism Masters program. He is also a founding editor at Sound Fields, a journal dedicated to the art and craft of audio documentary.

About the Curator

Juan Manuel Silverio is a researcher, curator and cultural worker based in Tovangaar (Los Angeles). They are invested in championing and building community with artists, curators, creatives and cultural workers from LGBTQ+ and communities of color across the city and beyond. Formerly the Assistant Director of Programming at LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions), Juan joined LACE in 2019 as an apprentice and later ran all exhibitions, programs, and operations. With LACE, they co-curated ABUNDANCE (2024), an interdisciplinary and performance art festival held at the L.A. Dance Project. With LA River Arts, Juan co-curated “Ki’king with the River” (2025), a public programming series of performances and workshops highlighting LA-based queer artists in conversation with the LA river. They joined the arts and culture field by way of the Getty Marrow Undergraduate Internship program, holding curatorial internships throughout Southern California at the Getty Research Institute, Self-Help Graphics & Art, and the 18th Street Arts Center. Juan was awarded a Leadership Institute fellowship in Visual Arts with the National Association of Latino Arts & Culture (NALAC) (2023) and was an AllPaper Seminar inaugural fellow at the Benton Museum of Art, Pomona College, Claremont, CA (2022). A member of the National Performance Network (NPN) Board of Directors, Juan contributed writing to the 60th Venice Biennale exhibition and catalogue, Stranieri Ovunque/Foreigners Everywhere (2024), curated by Adriano Pedrosa, and co-edited the LACE publication for CAVERNOUS: Young Joon Kwak and Mutant Salon (2018).