Blackbird Rook presents Christina Barrera
in Foundations, 23.01 - 14.02
Christina Barrera is a first-generation Colombian-American artist from West Palm Beach, Florida. She holds a BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art, an MFA from Hunter College, and works as a multidisciplinary artist and educator in New York City. Her works span a variety of mediums, including painting, printmaking, sculpture, and textile.
Barrera’s work often deals with questions of the body, identity, and colonialism, particularly in terms of how they relate to craft. Her figurative drawings pay homage to the glyphs and icons of Pre-Colonial South and Central America, a reclamation of what has been stolen and erased through colonization, while her textiles are demonstrative of her effort to weave information into the very fabric of the work, even down to the techniques she uses. She blends indigenous and European weaving traditions to talk about imperialism and her own identity as mestizo. Barrera’s work is also highly tied to her own body and the labor of the body. Her work truly captures the famous adage “the personal is political,” and through it, she asks us to contemplate the borders within ourselves, our lands, and our universe.
Barrera has exhibited at Galeria del Barrio, Hauser & Wirth, Lauren Powell Projects, the NARS Foundation House on Governors Island with ACOMPI, P.A.D. Gallery, Hunter East Harlem Gallery, and Old Stone House in New York City; Scott Charmin Gallery in Houston, TX; School 33 Art Center and Current Space in Baltimore, MD; and her work is in the collection of the Nepalese Academy of Fine Arts in Kathmandu, Nepal, as well as many personal collections across North and South America. Barrera is a Jacques and Natasha Gelman Trust Scholar, a Stanton Grant recipient, winner of a Robert Blackburn Printmaking Award, and has received funding and support from the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Studio Arts Center International, the AICAD New York Studio Program, and the National Association of Women Artists.
