Alex Proba Brings Joy To Guadalajara With A Large-Scale Mural

Alex Proba believes in the power of art to spark joy and curiosity. Having completed colorful installations of poppy, surrealist-shaped 3D sculptures for venues across the globe, from a mall in Shenzhen, China, to the open plateaus of the Giza Pyramids in Egypt, Proba has now applied her vivacious creativity to a large-scale, polychromatic mural in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Studio Proba’s Shape of Movement is a highlight of Torre San Luis, a ground-up office-hotel block by Boris Pena Architects. Playing against the geometric order and verticality of the gray terrazzo and concrete building, the mural’s organic forms recall flower petals and water droplets, activated by a locally inspired palette of dusty desert pinks, sage and mint greens, and mineral blues.

To complete her vision, Proba looked again to José Noé Suro, whose Guadalajara-based studio and factory Cerámica Suro draws on blue-chip artists from around the world to dream up installations in clay (a previous collaboration, a Miami pool, won the duo a 2025 Interior Design Best of Year Award). “Our role was to translate Alex’s vision into a ceramic medium while preserving the energy, color, and character of her original artwork,” Suro says of the resulting 22-by-44-foot mural, its 1,874 tiles in a palette of 12 colors, installed in what Proba calls a “modern mosaic” style in one of the street-facing courtyards. “I love that you can see the hand,” she adds, referring to how each tile is glazed, cut, polished, and manually set, leading to imperfections and variations that make it feel alive. “I want people to touch it, to feel the different textures, to see all the colors—to experience happiness, even if just for a small second.”