In a compact apartment in San Francisco’s Lower Haight district, artist Joset Medina has transformed the living space into an immersive extension of his art, blurring the lines between painting, architecture, and personal history. Medina, 41, a Venezuelan-born artist and architect, uses mixed-media works that spill beyond traditional canvases to envelop the walls, ceilings, moldings, and cabinets of the one-bedroom unit he shares with his husband, Robert Wiesner, an occupational therapist.
The couple moved into the approximately 900-square-foot rental in 2020, where their living areas also serve as Medina’s studio and workspace. With the landlord’s consent, Medina began a project in 2022 that integrates his layered, textured paintings directly onto the apartment’s surfaces, extending the artworks beyond their frames. The installation reflects his complex journey from Venezuela to Panama, and finally to San Francisco, where he settled permanently in 2017.
Medina’s migration narrative is central to the project. After working as an architect in Panama, he first visited San Francisco in 2013 and was struck by the visible expressions of freedom, including same-sex couples holding hands openly on the street. However, returning to Panama brought uncertainty and fear, as Medina navigated the challenges of immigration and career transition. He eventually secured a U.S. visa after a period in Spain and now splits his time between working for the Wiesman Group, an interior design and architecture firm, and creating private commissions and murals.
His artistic approach involves layering torn paper, acrylics, interior house paints, and occasionally gold leaf to produce textured, multi-dimensional images. He describes the works’ folds, overlaps, and translucencies as embodying “a physical history” that suggests scars, memory, and transformation. To protect delicate areas like the kitchen, Medina uses clear Montana varnish over painted surfaces.
The murals function as a continuation of the canvases, weaving narrative across the apartment. For instance, “Manipulated Emotions,” a piece started in Panama and finished in Spain, depicts a woman entwined with plants that merge with her body, symbolizing the process of healing and growth. Inspired by nature’s encroachment on architecture observed during a visit to Cambodia’s Angkor Wat, branches and vines stretch across walls and furnishings throughout the space.
“The Unrestrained Garden,” a painting completed shortly after Medina and Wiesner’s marriage in 2018, illustrates the couple surrounded by flowers and vines, reflecting personal freedom and the integration of place, love, and identity. The artwork’s title has come to represent the overall apartment project.
Raised in San Cristóbal in Venezuela’s Andean region, Medina credits the women in his family—his mother and grandmother—and their gardens as a profound influence on his work. Female figures frequently appear in his pieces as embodiments of vulnerability and resilience, often depicted in states of transformation alongside natural elements.
For Medina, the project transcends home decoration. It is an ongoing reckoning with displacement, identity, and belonging, uniting architecture, painting, and personal narrative into a singular, living expression. “This project isn’t simply about transforming an apartment,” he said. “It comes from years of leaving places, carrying my work across countries, rebuilding through uncertainty and trying to create belonging through painting, architecture and daily life.”