about

Nico Antuna Cooper is a DJ, painter, poet and Certified Sommelier based in El Paso, Texas. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Texas at El Paso, runs the label Xenoglossy Records and has taught college writing since 2018. He is also a REALTOR licensed in Texas and New Mexico.

Nico Antuna Cooper works across electronic music, painting, poetry and wine in El Paso, Texas. He studied International Studies and Spanish at the University of New Mexico, graduating magna cum laude in 2014, and completed an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Texas at El Paso in 2020 with Burning, a thesis of 55 poems.

His chapbook Las Lluvias was printed by Rio Sangre Print Collective in 2018; Where am I in this desert, a book of poems, paintings and photographs, followed from Duende Nuevo Press in 2019. His poems have appeared in Into the Void and Barrio Panther, in 2022 he wrote three essays on money and Latin America for Bitcoin Magazine, and in 2026 he began publishing wine essays at Nico Vino, starting with a study of the wines in Casanova's memoirs.

His paintings draw on a Mexican American border identity in a post-Informalist, abstract expressionist language. His first show was at Cafe de Tolteca in 2017, followed by Las Lluvias at LAIR Private Gallery in 2018 and Which Way Was Up at Glasbox in 2019. In 2023 he opened Zephyr Contemporary Art Gallery and Studio, where he has since shown Alchemist, Winter Solstice, Dreamtime, Illusions of Duality and the retrospective Roads to Damascus. Commissions include Meteora for 2Ten Coffee Roasters, Barolo for the wine program at Thyme Restaurant and a series for Mendez Isaac Joudi Attorneys at Law.

As Nico Antuna he has released singles since 2020, first on Duende Nuevo and since 2025 on his own label, Xenoglossy Records; the records have been supported by Sven Väth and Widerberg and have passed 100,000 streams, with listeners in Mexico, Germany and Argentina. He designs his own cover art and plays a Saturday residency at Taft Diaz and hosts Vines & Vinyl, a Friday series of house music and wine at Lotus Social House.

He became a Certified Sommelier with the Court of Master Sommeliers in 2026, after earning the WSET Level 2 Award with Distinction in 2024. He consults for Altair Imports and serves on the board of the El Paso Wine Society. He teaches composition and public speaking at the University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso Community College, New Mexico State University and Northern New Mexico College, and his courses for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UTEP cover twentieth-century art, Latin American literature and wine.

He has been a licensed REALTOR in Texas since 2020 and an associate broker in New Mexico since 2024, with training in commercial real estate through Champions School and the Texas Accredited Commercial Specialist program.