Ektor Garcia
I am a multi-disciplinary artist who approaches sculptural installation through wide-ranging experiments with craft techniques and materials.
Originally hailing from a small town in Northern California, my family and I were in constant movement, frequently travelling between Mexico and the US. My itinerant home life introduced me to many different environments and instilled within me a restless nature. As a result I continue to maintain an unconventional ‘nomadic’ studio practice, often working on a small scale and with easily portable materials so that I may stitch, weave, crochet and mould while travelling from place to place.
Rather than formally studying craft techniques, I taught myself crochet from an early age, picking up a variety of craft skills from friends, family and my community. My art developed as a pastime and leisure activity, growing into a compulsive habit, then an obsession. My current practise extends from this deep desire to make, a love of learning and a fascination for the myriad ways the hand can create form and pattern with the simplest materials and gestures.
Formal study helped me to expand my lexicon of crochet, weaving and fiber-work into its own language, enveloping within this ceramic, metal and leatherwork, found materials, and the principles of assemblage and social sculpture. Despite my academic training there remains the voice of an outsider speaking through my work. I strongly identify with the freedom and spontaneity of the outsider artist as well as the functional necessity of the artisan
I am in constant pursuit of modes of making and presentation that trouble the division between so-called high and low culture. My queer Mexican-American experience deeply informs every aspect of my work, with the cognitively dissonant perspectives of marginal and mainstream culture in negotiation and at play across my installations. I recognize my work as political and personal, multivocal and autobiographical, inclusive and subjective.
Born 1985, Red Bluff, California
Lives and works in Mexico City and New York City
Education
2016 MFA Columbia University, New York, NY
2014 BFA School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Group Exhibitions
2018 Dwelling Poetically: Mexico City, a case study, ACCA, Melbourne Australia
2017 Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon, New Museum, NY
2017 la tanga wax, Biquini Wax, Mexico City
2017 No More Deaths Benefit, Salon 94, NY
2016 Contemporary Ceramics, LeRoy Neiman Gallery, NY
2016 Matthew K. Abonnenc and ektor garcia, Sargent’s Daughters, NY
2015 Michael Blake and ektor garcia, The Can Gallery, NY
2015 Floating Point, Judith Charles Gallery, NY
2015 Columbia MFA First Year Exhibition, Wallach Art Gallery, NY
2013 Power of Ten, Threewalls, Chicago
2012 Hispanic Heritage, Chicago Public Library, Chicago
2011 Take Root, Luggage Store Gallery, San Francisco
Solo Exhibitions
2018 portalez, Mary Mary, Art Basel, Switzerland
2017 cochi, Visitor’s Welcome Center, LA
2017 lleno y vacio, Salon ACME, Mexico City
2016 kriziz, kurimanzutto, Mexico City
2014 uña persona show, Touche Leather Bar, Chicago, IL
Awards
2016 Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship Award
2015 Institute of Investigative Living with Andrea Zittel,
Columbia University Dean’s Travel Grant, Columbia University
2013 Sachs Scholar, Goldman Sachs Scholarship
2012 Ox-Bow LeRoy Neiman Fellowship, Ox-Bow Residency
SAIC Presidential Merit Scholarship, SAIC
2011 SAIC Presidential Merit Scholarship, SAIC