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