Margarita Cabrera, Art League Houston’s 2019 Artist of the Year.
Earlier this year, San Antonio-based artist Margarita Cabrera was selected as Art League Houston‘s (ALH) 2019 Artist of the Year. On September 7, an exhibition featuring her work, titled What Art Can Do — The Collaborative Act of Making, will open in the main gallery at ALH and continue through November 2. The exhibition will be one of three shows at ALH through the first week of November. (The others are solo shows by Preetika Rajgariah and Charis Ammon.)
ALH’s Artist of the Year award, founded in 1983, recognizes artists who have demonstrated exceptional creativity and outstanding achievement, and whose work has had a significant and positive impact on contemporary visual art in Texas. Cabrera (who we have featured in our own series of Texas artist profiles) follows Trenton Doyle Hancock, Joseph Havel, Mary McCleary, Melissa Miller, Luis Jiménez, Bert L. Long and others who have received the honor.
Cabrera’s exhibition will coincide with the release of a publication that’s focused on Cabrera’s community-based art projects. It’s being published in conjunction with this exhibition and will include an essay by Rocío Aranda-Alvarado, the Program Officer at Creativity and Free Expression at the Ford Foundation in New York.
In a press release about the exhibition from ALH, Cabrera states:
“My work centers on social-political community issues including cultural identity, migration, violence, inclusivity, labor, and empowerment. I create sculptures made out of media 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.”
The other exhibitions closing out the year at ALH will include Entangled, a solo exhibition of recent work by the Houston-based interdisciplinary artist Preetika Rajgariah, and Charis Ammon’s Maintenance, an exhibition of new paintings on canvas and paper by the Brooklyn and Houston-based artist.
Founded in 1948, Art League Houston has radically evolved beyond the parameters of traditional art leagues. While keeping the core of the art league model – a robust membership deeply committed to the value of visual art in contemporary life – Art League Houston embraces contemporary approaches to curatorial programming, community-building, art education, and outreach to under resourced communities.
For more information about Art League Houston, please go here.
