Ryan Mendoza (born October 29, 1971, in New York City) is an American painter. He works and lives between Naples and Berlin. In his paintings, he counterbalances old master techniques with contemporary themes. In 2012, Ryan and his then 8-month-pregnant wife Fabia were briefly arrested in Naples after an art performance in solidarity with the Russian punk-rock band Pussy Riot in front of their studio in Rione Sanità. His intimate diary Everything is Mine (Tutto è mio), curated by Simona Vinci, was released by the Italian publisher Bompiani in 2015. In 2016, Mendoza was ranked number 147 of the 500 most successful US artists born after 1966 by Artnet. The White House In 2016, he brought an entire house from Detroit to Europe. It was first on display at Art Rotterdam 2016. The White House is on permanent exhibition at the Verbeke Foundation, Belgium. With The White House, Mendoza wandered into a politically charged debate. He was initially only looking for a way of reconnecting with his identity as an American after living abroad for 24 years. However, The White House was described as a window into the Detroit's property problems. The remnants of The White House project at 8 Mile and Livernois in Detroit were demolished in March 2016. Mendoza covered the costs of the demolition. A documentary on the project entitled The White House was directed by Fabia Mendoza . The Invitation In June 2016, Mendoza painted two abandoned houses in Brightmoor, Detroit, for his installation The Invitation. Bullet-sized holes in the house façades spelled out the names Trump and Clinton. Mendoza officially invited the presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to sleep a night in his installation, at what he called "the real White House," located in Detroit's troubled Brightmoor neighborhood. The presidential candidates both declined his invitation. Resident John O'Malley, a 60-year-old nurse battling cancer, was living between the two abandoned structures. He and urban activist Jonathan Pommerville reached out to Mendoza to help make his difficult situation public. Rosa Parks' House Summer 2016, Rosa Parks' niece Rhea McCauley donated the former house where her aunt Rosa Parks lived from 1957 to 1959 in Detroit to Ryan Mendoza to help preserve the home of the American civil rights movement icon. "All of my work deals with things and people who have been forgotten on some level," Mendoza stated to CNN in November 2016. Rhea McCauley