Chris E. Vargas is a video maker & interdisciplinary artist currently based in Los Angeles, CA whose work uses humor and performance with mainstream idioms to explore the complex ways that queer and trans people negotiate spaces for themselves within historical & institutional memory and popular culture.  

He earned his MFA in the department of Art Practice from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2011 and his BA in the Film & Digital Media department from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2006. He is a recipient of a 2016 Creative Capital award, a 2020 John S. Guggenheim fellowship, and in 2024/2025 was a Latinx Artist Fellow. He is currently a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies at UC Berkeley.

From 2008-2013, he made, in collaboration with Greg Youmans, the web-based trans/cisgender sitcom Falling In Love...with Chris and Greg. Episodes of the series have screened at numerous film festivals and art venues, including MIX NYC, SF Camerawork, and the Tate Modern. With Eric Stanley, Vargas co-directed the movie Homotopia (2006) and its feature-length sequel Criminal Queers (2015) which have been screened at Palais de Tokyo, LACE, Centre for Contemporary Arts Glasgow, and the New Museum among other venues. Vargas is also the Executive Director of MOTHA, the Museum of Trans Hirstory & Art, a critical and conceptual arts & hirstory institution highlighting the contributions of trans art to the cultural and political landscape.

Vargas is the co-editor, with David Evan Franz and Christina Linden, of Trans Hirstory in 99 Objects (Hirmer, 2023), a project of the Museum of Trans Hirstory & Art.