Laura Villarreal
Bio
LAURA VILLARREAL
American, born Mexico. Works and lives in Miami, FL.
Villarreal is an interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of fiber, painting, and
photography. Through the use of embroidery, paint, and textile on paper and canvas, Villarrealcreates a transdisciplinary language and poetry inspired by the vivid colors and ancienttraditions of her Mexican roots.
In the late 1990s, she immigrated to the United States, aprocess tha t underscored the economic and social disparities between the twocountries. Creating tensions among her multimedia works, Villarreal integrates bothenvironmental geographies in her life,questioning issues of identity, sense of place, longing,and memor y.Villarreal holds a MA in Analysis and Management of Contemporary Art from the University ofBarcelona, Spain. She studied at the University of North Carolina, the New York School ofVisual Arts, and the Art Students League in New York. Select indivi dual exhibitions include theInstituto Cultural de Mexico in Miami, the Coral Gables Museum, the Embassy of Chile inWashington D.C., the Centro Cultural Fatima in Mexico, and the Mexican Consulate in LosAngeles. She participated in Parc Lima, Chaco Chile , and Pinta Miami. She has curated for theMexican Cultural Institute in Miami, part of the Consulate dedicated to the promotion ofMexican artists in the US, and currently directs art education programs for young audiences inthe city of Key Biscayne, Flo rida. Villarreal s studio is located at Collective62.
Statement
I grew up in a country of pure yellows, pinks, and oranges. Mexico is a vivid place for festivities, unusual costumes, and vibrant objects. It is a country that tries to preserve its homogeneity as a nation while simultaneously fighting to return to a past life, one snatched away from its people. When I moved to the United States, I discovered a place ruled by precision and efficiency, where people have built everything to resemble and reflect their own image.
I believe it is through a series of actions that we form a new self. My experience of living in both countries has created a tension that I bring to my work through an interdisciplinary approach. I embed and suture organic colorful fabric threads onto monochromatic photographs; the techniques of ancient Mayan textile traditions reappear in the new structured forms of geometric shapes and language; I disrupt the architectural space by creating monumental geometric drawings with thread; and create textile paintings inspired by Mexico’s multilayered, deteriorating, and colored walls.
My research is inspired by the archival and embroidery textile traditions of Mexico, its rich ancestral pigments, and the properties of its food and plants. Weaving history through the materiality of the work is reflective of my technical process. Traditions that are memory become tangible as I question issues of identity, sense of place, and belonging. And it is in this search for identity that every time the needle pierces the photograph, the pigment adheres to the fabric, the thread attaches to the paper, and the space is restructured, I remake myself every step of the way.
