Agave #3

Margarita Cabrera worked with community members to create soft sculptures with an immigration-related twist. Community members, including immigrants, worked with Cabrera to create saguaro cactus sculptures made of Border Patrol agent uniforms. Every cactus was also decorated with words or images taken from stories of actual immigrant experiences. The sculptural replicas are native to the southwest U.S. and reminiscent of the most traveled route across the U.S. border.
“My work centers on social-political community issues including cultural identity, migration, violence, inclusivity, labor, and empowerment. I create sculptures made out of mediums ranging from steel, copper, wood, ceramics, and fabric.

I have worked on a number of collaborative projects at the intersection of contemporary art practices, indigenous Mexican folk art and craft traditions, and US-Mexico relations. In addition to studying and preserving endangered cultural and craft traditions, these projects have served as active investigations into the creation of just working conditions and the protection of immigrant rights. My emphasis is on creating a social consciousness through my work, generating solutions to these problems through my art and empowering all members of highly diverse communities.”

These artworks speak directly to the human and the institutional actors at play when we speak of our borders. State power along with actual migrants interplay to create thought provoking sculptures that speak to our immigration policies in the U.S.

Margarita Cabrera received an MFA from Hunter College in New York, NY. Cabrera currently lives and works in El Paso where she recently had a two-year exhibit at the El Paso Museum of Art.   Her most recent exhibitions include a show entitled “Pop Departures” at the Seattle Art Museum.   Her work has been included in galleries such as 516Arts, Sara Meltzer, Walter Maciel, and Synderman-Works. Her work has been included in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; the McNay Museum San Antonio; the Sweeney Art Center for Contemporary Art at the University of California, Riverside, the Sun Valley Center for the Arts, and El Museo del Barrio, NYC, LA County Museum of Art, CA. In 2012 she was a recipient of the Knight Artist in Residence at the McColl Center for Visual Art in Charlotte, NC. Cabrera was also a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant.