Volver Monica Czukerberg - Adriana Zubikarai [Español/English]

 

¿Qué significa volver? En la naturaleza, volver es más que un desplazamiento. Es un impulso inscrito en la memoria de innumerables seres vivos, promovido por una inteligencia silenciosa que guía a los cuerpos a través de océanos, cielos y territorios. Cada año, millones de aves, mamíferos marinos, insectos y otras especies emprenden viajes de extraordinaria precisión para regresar a sitios específicos donde las condiciones hacen posible la renovación de la vida. Lejos de ser un fenómeno exclusivamente biológico, el regreso revela una forma de pertenencia. Volver supone reconocer un lugar —como origen, refugio o destino— y regresar a él, haciendo de este acto una expresión elocuente del instinto por el que la vida se afirma.

Esta exposición reúne un conjunto de obras que Monica Czukerberg (Ciudad de México, 1983) y Adriana Zubikarai (Ciudad de México, 1975) han desarrollado como parte de sus indagaciones en torno a la migración y a los vínculos que los seres vivos establecemos con el planeta. Desde lenguajes distintos, ambas creadoras encuentran en los desplazamientos de la fauna un referente de extraordinaria potencia para reflexionar sobre la persistencia de aquello que, aun dejado atrás, continúa habitando el cuerpo y la imaginación.

Las especies migratorias que protagonizan las piezas de Monica Czukerberg —aves fragatas, charranes, pelícanos, tortugas marinas y mariposas monarcas— recorren grandes distancias para regresar a las costas, manglares y bosques mexicanos donde se reproducen y anidan. Los animales parecen emerger de campos cromáticos donde las referencias al agua y la vegetación permanecen abiertas, suspendidas entre la abstracción y la naturaleza. La representación elude la evocación de una geografía literal para configurar un ámbito poético en el que se funden figura y entorno.

Monica Czukerberg. Hilos de origen 2, 2026 Técnica mixta sobre tela

Monica Czukerberg. Hilos de origen 5, 2026 Técnica mixta sobre tela

El textil adquiere especial significación en estas piezas. Ribetes elaborados con fragmentos de telas recicladas, bordados, tejidos populares y materiales recuperados «enmarcan» cada composición. Estos fragmentos pertenecen a una obra textil en permanente transformación que la artista desarrolla desde hace años como parte de su investigación sobre el universo artesanal mexicano y su relación con la memoria cultural.

Monica Czukerberg. Hilos de origen 4, 2026 Técnica mixta sobre tela

Monica Czukerberg. Hilos de origen 3, 2026 Técnica mixta sobre tela

Para Czukerberg, el origen no es solo un punto de partida geográfico: es un lugar de pertenencia que permanece activo aun cuando el desplazamiento sobrevenga. Volver es, entonces, conservar vivo el vínculo con algo que, de una forma u otra, nos constituye. Cada retorno reafirma un lazo con el origen y reconstruye un mapa de memorias que, sedimentadas por la experiencia, terminan por hacerse parte del ser. Así, aunque haya lugares que abandonemos, estos pueden continuar siendo «nuestros». La memoria se abrirá paso, una y otra vez, hacia el camino de regreso.

Monica Czukerberg. Hilos de origen 10, 2026
Técnica mixta sobre tela

En la obra de Adriana Zubikarai, el acto de volver se manifiesta, paradójicamente, a través de la ausencia. Las huellas que las ballenas jorobadas dejan sobre la superficie del mar al hundirse, el agave perpetuándose gracias a la visita polinizadora del murciélago magueyero, las perforaciones que la oruga deja en el algodoncillo o la mariposa que anuncia la desaparición de la larva, revelan que todo proceso vital implica aparición y desaparición, presencia y ausencia.

Adriana Zubikarai. Hábitat de la continuidad, 2026
Técnica mixta sobre lino

Adriana Zubikarai. Huellas del devenir, 2026
Técnica mixta sobre lino

Si bien Zubikarai parte de una observación atenta del mundo natural, su propósito trasciende la aproximación ilustrativa. Algunas de sus composiciones reducen el dibujo a lo esencial, privilegiando el color y la pastosidad de formas que emergen sobre fondos de lino apenas intervenidos. Sus paisajes poseen una cualidad atmosférica. El horizonte se vuelve difuso, la luz parece suspendida y el espacio adquiere una dimensión evocadora. La artista recurre a medios mixtos que integran desde técnicas que evocan tradiciones artesanales, como el bordado, hasta recursos tecnológicos como la realidad aumentada.

Adriana Zubikarai. Estudio de un paso sereno, 2026. Técnica mixta sobre lino con video de RA
Adriana Zubikarai. Estudio de jardineros nocturnos, 2026. Técnica mixta sobre lino con video de RA 
Adriana Zubikarai. Legado, 2026. Técnica mixta sobre lino

Estas piezas nos hacen pensar en cómo las migraciones forman parte de una sucesión de transformaciones donde el no-estar constituye una condición necesaria para el nuevo comienzo. El paisaje y la vegetación adquieren, de este modo, una condición activa, convirtiéndose en ámbitos donde permanecen las huellas de lo que estuvo, lo que está por llegar o lo que continúa transformándose fuera del campo visible.

Adriana Zubikarai. El mar recuerda, 2026 Técnica mixta sobre lino

Adriana Zubikarai. Cunero de Monarca, 2026 Técnica mixta sobre lino

Las obras reunidas en esta exposición recuerdan que migrar y permanecer no son experiencias opuestas: son movimientos complementarios mediante los cuales la vida y la cultura renuevan sus vínculos con la tierra. Acaso sea en ese volver —real o ficcionado— donde la identidad encuentre una de sus formas más genuinas de persistencia.

Katherine Chacón

SOBRE LAS ARTISTAS

Monica Czukerberg (Ciudad de México, 1983) es arquitecta y artista visual. Estudió Arquitectura en la Universidad Anáhuac (2002–2006) y amplió su formación con cursos de moda, historia del arte, dibujo y pintura en la Universidad Iberoamericana y el Centro de Diseño, Cine y Televisión de Ciudad de México, así como en el Istituto di Moda Burgo de Milán.

Durante tres años trabajó en Grupo Elipse, firma de arquitectura de Ciudad de México, experiencia que profundizó su interés por el espacio, la materialidad y el diseño, elementos que continúan dando forma a su práctica artística. Desde entonces, ha desarrollado una trayectoria sostenida que incluye seis exposiciones individuales —entre ellas, en la Galería Óscar Román y Casa Nuestra (antigua sede del Senado de la República en Ciudad de México)— y alrededor de cuarenta exposiciones colectivas en galerías, museos, universidades e instituciones culturales de ciudades como Cancún, Miami, Nueva York y Madrid.

Durante diez años se formó en el taller de pintura de Eugenia Orozco y también se desempeñó como jurado en un concurso infantil de pintura organizado por Karen Kayemet LeIsrael en Ciudad de México. En 2025 obtuvo su Maestría en Bellas Artes (MFA) en Barry University, Miami, donde presentó una exposición de tesis centrada en la sostenibilidad a través de la reutilización de materiales y orientada a crear un espacio de convivencia entre la abstracción y la naturaleza.

En 2025 presentó la exposición individual Mexican Flowers, Living Memory en Miami International Fine Arts (MIFA), profundizando así su investigación en torno a las relaciones entre naturaleza, memoria e identidad cultural mexicana.

Adriana Zubikarai (Ciudad de México, 1975) es artista visual, curadora, educadora y autora de libros infantiles. Obtuvo una licenciatura en Economía en la Universidad Iberoamericana de Ciudad de México (1993–1997), antes de realizar estudios de fotografía en el International Center of Photography (ICP) de Nueva York, donde se especializó en fotografía en blanco y negro, iluminación y estudios generales de fotografía. Posteriormente continuó su formación artística en dibujo y pintura en el Leah Lopez Atelier y en la New York Academy of Art (NYAA), donde participó en programas de desarrollo profesional durante más de una década.

Su práctica multidisciplinaria abarca pintura, dibujo, escultura, fotografía, video y arte textil, y refleja un interés constante por las intersecciones entre la experimentación artística, la conciencia ecológica y la narrativa visual. Paralelamente a su práctica de estudio, se ha desempeñado como educadora, curadora y organizadora de exposiciones, colaborando con instituciones como Miami International Fine Arts (MIFA), P71 y ROOM en Tribeca. Asimismo, es autora del libro infantil Cosas, Cosas por Quisicosas.

A lo largo de las últimas dos décadas, Zubikarai ha desarrollado una activa trayectoria expositiva que incluye muestras en México, Estados Unidos y Japón. Su obra ha sido presentada en espacios como el International Center of Photography, Salmagundi Club, Bennington Center for the Arts, Hyanky Gallery en Osaka, Aqua Art Miami y Miami International Fine Arts (MIFA), entre muchos otros.

En 2026 presentó en MIFA su primera exposición individual, The Migration of the Self. Su trabajo también ha aparecido en diversas publicaciones, entre ellas Art Miami Magazine, que la incluyó en su selección Female Artists to Watch en 2025.

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What does volver—to return—mean? In the natural world, returning is far more than movement from one place to another. It is an ancient impulse, embedded in the living memory of countless species, guided by a quiet intelligence that carries them across oceans, skies, and lands. Each year, millions of birds, marine mammals, insects, and other migratory animals undertake journeys of astonishing precision, finding their way back to the places where life can renew itself. More than a biological phenomenon, return reveals a profound form of belonging. To return is to recognize a place—as origin, refuge, or destination—and to find one's way back to it, making the journey itself an enduring affirmation of life's continuity.

This exhibition brings together works by Monica Czukerberg (Mexico City, 1983) and Adriana Zubikarai (Mexico City, 1975), whose artistic practices examine migration and the enduring ties between living beings and the Earth. Each through a distinct visual language, the two artists turn to animal migration as a powerful metaphor for the persistence of what, even after being left behind, continues to inhabit both body and imagination.

The migratory species that inhabit Monica Czukerberg's work—frigatebirds, terns, pelicans, sea turtles, and monarch butterflies—travel immense distances as they return to the Mexican coasts, mangroves, and forests where they breed and nest. These creatures seem to emerge from expansive fields of color in which references to water and vegetation remain deliberately open, suspended between abstraction and the natural world. Rather than evoke a literal geography, Czukerberg creates poetic environments in which figure and landscape dissolve into one another.

Monica Czukerberg. Hilos de origen 2, 2026 Mixed Media on Canvas

Monica Czukerberg. Hilos de origen 5, 2026 Mixed Media on Canvas

Textile occupies a central place in these works. Borders crafted from recycled fabrics, embroidery, traditional weaving, and reclaimed materials frame each composition. These fragments belong to an evolving textile project that Czukerberg has developed over many years as part of her ongoing exploration of Mexican craft traditions and their relationship to cultural memory.

Monica Czukerberg. Hilos de origen 4, 2026 Mixed Media on Canvas

Monica Czukerberg. Hilos de origen 3, 2026 Mixed Media on Canvas

For Czukerberg, origin extends beyond geography: it is a place of belonging that remains active even through displacement. To return is to keep alive the connection to something that, in one way or another, shapes who we are. Each return reaffirms a bond with one's origins while reconstructing a map of memories that, layered through experience, ultimately become woven into one's very being. Even the places we leave behind may continue to feel like our own. Memory will always find its way back, again and again.

Monica Czukerberg. Hilos de origen 10, 2026
Mixed Media on Canvas

In Adriana Zubikarai's work, the act of returning manifests itself paradoxically through absence. The traces left by humpback whales as they disappear beneath the ocean's surface, the agave sustained through the pollinating visits of the lesser long-nosed bat, the perforations left by caterpillars on milkweed leaves, and the butterfly whose emergence marks the disappearance of the larva all reveal that every vital process unfolds through cycles of appearance and disappearance, presence and absence.

Adriana Zubikarai. Habitat of Continuity, 2026
Mixed Media on Linen

Adriana Zubikarai. Traces of Becoming, 2026
Mixed Media on Linen

While rooted in close observation of the natural world, Zubikarai's work extends well beyond illustration. Some compositions reduce drawing to its essentials, allowing color and impasto forms to emerge against barely intervened linen surfaces. Her landscapes possess an atmospheric quality: horizons dissolve, light seems suspended, and space itself becomes evocative. Working across mixed media, Zubikarai brings together craft traditions—including embroidery—with contemporary technologies such as augmented reality.

Adriana Zubikarai. Studio of a Gentle Passage, 2026. Mixed Media on Linen with AR Video
Adriana Zubikarai. Studio of the Night Gardeners, 2026. Mixed Media on Linen with AR Video
Adriana Zubikarai. Legacy, 2026. Mixed Media on Linen

These works invite us to consider migration as part of an ongoing succession of transformations, in which absence becomes a necessary condition for new beginnings. Landscape and vegetation become active participants, bearing the traces of what has departed, what is yet to arrive, and what continues to transform beyond the visible.

Adriana Zubikarai. The Ocean Remembers, 2026 Mixed Media on Linen

Adriana Zubikarai. Monarch's Cradle, 2026 Mixed Media on Linen

Together, the works presented in Volver remind us that migration and rootedness are not opposing experiences, but complementary movements through which life and culture continually renew their bond with the Earth. Perhaps it is in the act of returning—whether literal or imagined—that identity finds one of its most genuine forms of persistence.

Katherine Chacón

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Monica Czukerberg (Mexico City, 1983) is an architect and visual artist. She studied Architecture at Anáhuac University (2002–2006) and furthered her training with courses in fashion, art history, drawing, and painting at Universidad Iberoamericana and the Centro de Diseño, Cine y Televisión in Mexico City, as well as at the Istituto di Moda Burgo in Milan.

She worked for three years at Grupo Elipse, an architecture firm in Mexico City, an experience that deepened her interest in space, materiality, and design—elements that continue to shape her artistic practice. Since then, she has built a steady career that includes six solo exhibitions—among them at Galería Óscar Román and Casa Nuestra (formerly the Old Senate of the Republic in Mexico City)—and around forty group shows in galleries, museums, universities, and cultural institutions in cities such as Cancún, Miami, New York, and Madrid.

For ten years she studied in the painting workshop of Eugenia Orozco and also served as a juror for a children’s painting competition organized by Karen Kayemet LeIsrael in Mexico City. In 2025, she earned her Master of Fine Arts (MFA) at Barry University in Miami, presenting a thesis exhibition that explored sustainability through the reuse of materials and sought to create a space where abstraction and nature could coexist.

In 2025, she presented the solo exhibition Mexican Flowers, Living Memory at Miami International Fine Arts (MIFA), further expanding her ongoing exploration of the relationships between nature, memory, and Mexican cultural identity.

Adriana Zubikarai (Mexico City, 1975) is a visual artist, curator, educator, and children's book author. She earned a B.A. in Economics from Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City (1993–1997) before pursuing studies in photography at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York, where she specialized in black-and-white photography, lighting, and general photographic studies. She later continued her artistic training in drawing and painting at the Leah Lopez Atelier and the New York Academy of Art (NYAA), where she attended professional development programs over more than a decade.

Her multidisciplinary practice encompasses painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, video, and fiber arts, reflecting an ongoing interest in the intersections between artistic experimentation, ecological awareness, and visual storytelling. Alongside her studio practice, she has worked as an educator, curator, and exhibition organizer, collaborating with institutions such as Miami International Fine Arts (MIFA), P71, and ROOM in Tribeca, while also publishing the children's book Cosas, Cosas por Quisicosas.

Over the past two decades, Zubikarai has developed an active exhibition career that includes exhibitions in Mexico, the United States, and Japan. Her work has been presented at venues such as the International Center of Photography, Salmagundi Club, Bennington Center for the Arts, Hyanky Gallery in Osaka, Aqua Art Miami, and Miami International Fine Arts (MIFA), among many others. In 2026, she presented her first solo exhibition at MIFA, The Migration of the Self. Her work has also been featured in publications including Art Miami Magazine, which named her among its Female Artists to Watch in 2025.

Nataly Horan Gutierrez. We Are All Just Taking Up Space [English/Español]

From molecules to planets, it is all circles.
— Nataly Horan Gutierrez

To occupy space is among the most fundamental conditions of existence. Every body, every material, every form leaves a trace—however subtle—within the world it inhabits. Nataly Horan Gutierrez begins with this seemingly simple premise and transforms it into an exploration of the invisible relationships that bind bodies to the spaces they occupy.

Throughout her work, one form emerges with remarkable persistence: the circle. Present in structures ranging from the microscopic to the celestial, it is one of the fundamental patterns through which nature organizes itself. More than a recurring motif, the circle becomes an organizing principle—one that speaks simultaneously of growth, continuity, rhythm, and transformation.

Escape in Red, 2026. India ink on canvas

Built through the patient accumulation of countless ink circles, Horan Gutierrez's compositions give rise to visual organisms that appear to expand, condense, and dissolve in continuous motion. Each circle possesses its own identity, yet acquires meaning only through its relationship to the others. Drawing moves beyond description to become an additive process, generating intricate networks that evoke biological tissues, microscopic cartographies, and cosmic formations. The circle ceases to function as a closed geometric figure and instead reveals itself as a dynamic structure, capable of expressing continuous becoming.

Proof of Life, 2026. India ink on canvas (Triptych)

Bringing together several interconnected bodies of work, this exhibition offers a visual meditation on the subtle forms and rhythms that inhabit space, emerging and circulating like invisible currents. Here, color unfolds through its vibratory potential as a perceptible expansive force. The works in the Chakra Collection reference the energetic centers described in various Eastern traditions, not as illustrations of spiritual doctrine, but as visual metaphors for balance, resonance, and embodied awareness. Each composition seems to expand and contract like the rhythm of breath, reminding us that inhabiting space is not simply a matter of occupying physical territory, but of participating in a continuous exchange with the world around us. Breathing is perhaps the most elemental expression of that relationship: space enters us even as we extend ourselves into it.

Escape in Blue, 2026. India ink on canvas

Nataly Horan Gutierrez ultimately invites us to recognize a shared condition. We all exist by occupying space, altering the space of others, and participating in a larger, subtle web in which every presence, however discreet, leaves its mark. Like the circular gesture that quietly traverses the exhibition, existence itself becomes a continuous act of exchange—one through which every living being inscribes its presence while belonging to an order infinitely greater than itself.

Katherine Chacón

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We Are All Just Taking Up Space

Nataly Horan Gutierrez and Katherine Chacón

From molecules to planets, it is all circles
 Nataly Horan Gutierrez

Ocupar un espacio constituye una de las condiciones más elementales de la existencia. Todo cuerpo, materia o forma deja una huella, por mínima que sea, dentro del mundo que habitamos. La obra de Nataly Horan Gutierrez parte de esa constatación aparentemente simple para convertirla en una exploración sobre las relaciones invisibles que vinculan los cuerpos con el espacio que habitan.

En su trabajo una forma aparece de manera persistente: el círculo. Presente desde las estructuras microscópicas hasta los cuerpos celestes, esta figura constituye uno de los patrones fundamentales mediante los cuales la naturaleza toda se organiza.

We Are All Just Taking Up Space Series, 2025. India ink on paper

Desarrolladas mediante cúmulos de pequeñas circunferencias hechas de tinta, sus composiciones construyen organismos visuales que parecen expandirse, condensarse o disolverse continuamente. Cada círculo posee una identidad propia, pero adquiere sentido únicamente en relación con los demás. El dibujo deja de ser un gesto descriptivo para convertirse en un proceso acumulativo, generando retículas semejantes a tejidos biológicos, cartografías microscópicas o configuraciones cósmicas. El círculo deja entonces de ser una figura cerrada para revelarse como una forma capaz de promover un permanente devenir.

Escape in CMY, 2026. India ink on paper

Esta exposición propone, a través de las diversas series que la conforman, un acercamiento visual a las formas y ritmos sutiles que habitan el espacio y que emergen y circulan como oleadas de energía. El color expone en estas piezas su capacidad vibratoria como fuerza expansiva perceptible. Las piezas de Chakra Collection hacen referencia a vórtices energéticos descritos por diversas tradiciones orientales. Cada composición parece expandirse y recogerse como un pulso vital, recordándonos que habitar un espacio no es solo ocupar un lugar físico, sino en participar de un intercambio continuo con aquello que nos rodea. Respirar es, quizás, la forma más elemental de esa relación, en la que el espacio entra en nosotros al mismo tiempo que nosotros nos proyectamos hacia él.

Nataly Horan Gutierrez nos invita a reconocer una condición común: todos existimos ocupando un lugar, modificando el espacio de los otros y formando parte de un entramado sutil mayor donde cada presencia, por discreta que parezca, impacta. Como el trazo circular que atraviesa silenciosamente toda la exposición, existir significa participar de un movimiento continuo donde cada ser deja su huella mientras forma parte de un orden infinitamente más amplio.

Katherine Chacón

Curatorial text for the exhibit Nataly Horan Gutierrez. We Are All Just Taking Up Space, held from August 6 to September 24, 2026, in Gallery D at Miami International Fine Arts (MIFA), Miami.

Mayra Alpízar. Textile. Intimate Matter (English version)

 

Mayra Alpízar

This exhibition offers an anthological survey of the work of Cuban artist Mayra Alpízar (Matanzas, 1956), bringing together pieces created between 1994 and 2024. The selection traces a sustained arc through some of her most significant series—Eva sobre el tapiz (Eve on the Tapestry), Hilando fino (Fine Threading), Si Aristóteles hubiera guisado (If Aristotle Had Cooked), and Paños grises (Gray Cloths)—through which the central concerns of her practice come into focus. The presentation also includes two three-dimensional works and Avío de pesca (Fishing Tackle), a process-based work.

For Alpízar, sewing has been a way of feeling and thinking through life. Since textile emerged as her primary mode of expression, her practice has functioned as a kind of visual record in which the affective and the social intertwine. In this sense, her use of textile was never merely a technical choice, but an aesthetic and conceptual position. Sewing—traditionally associated with the domestic sphere and the feminine—is reclaimed by the artist as a field of signification through which she narrates and reworks her experiences as a woman, mother, friend, Cuban, and migrant. Her work thus moves toward a space in which a critical perspective takes shape through poetic ways of engaging lived experience.

Within this framework, the female body emerges as a central presence. In the works from series Eva sobre el tapiz—Three Months of Grace, Altar, and The Lovers, among others—the figure of Eve functions as an archetypal representation of the feminine. Through a semantic play on the expression “to lay one’s cards on the table,” understood as a gesture of revelation, Alpízar exposes emotions, relationships, and inner states through compositions that approach the universal through the autobiographical. Here, the female figure is not idealized but presented as marked by tensions and contradictions: desire, vulnerability, violence, resilience. The works in this series reveal the complexity of female existence beyond stereotype, situating the body in a zone of friction where love and its loss, the erotic and the sacred, the intimate and the social are deeply entangled.

In the series Hilando fino, the artist moves into a more explicitly critical territory, addressing the tensions of the social context of her native country. The title, a Spanish expression related to sewing, refers both to the need for subtlety in restrictive contexts and to the precision inherent in textile work. In pieces such as Interior with Shipwreck, The Excessive Light, and The Virgin of the Dry Tree, Alpízar engages in strategies of appropriation. In doing so, she draws on references from both universal and local art histories to reflect on the failure of the political model in Cuba and its impact on the fragmentation of the social and familial fabric.

Alpízar’s practice extends into a critical reflection on how domestic labor is perceived in Si Aristóteles hubiera guisado, a series inspired by the well-known phrase by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Here, the artist departs from the traditional tapestry format to experiment with textile objects, specifically aprons—everyday items associated with food preparation in the domestic sphere. The apron becomes a symbolic support through which emotions, narratives, and lived experience tied to women’s daily lives are explored. Patches, cuts, fasteners, and pockets form a visual language in which domestic labor is affirmed as a legitimate site of meaning-making.

The Cuban experience—particularly the fractures brought about by the crisis of the 1990s—becomes especially visible in the series Paños grises, where the artist constructs images marked by instability. Through scenes organized as narrative sequences, Alpízar arranges precarious structures, indeterminate spaces, and bodies that seem to sustain themselves in fragile balance. The stool, constantly on the verge of collapse, and the female figures in states of tension or vulnerability function as allegories of crisis and of the fragility of life it produces. Within this same framework, the three-dimensional work Yurisleydis can be understood as a figure that condenses this experience of precarity.

Across this body of work, each stitch and each fragment of fabric speaks to a creative process that, like memory, is built through discontinuity—out of remnants, traces, and intimate bonds. Sewing asserts itself as both gesture and method: to sew is to join, but also to mend, to insist on the possibility of making meaning where experience appears fractured.

Exhibited Works

Three Months of Grace, 1990. Patchwork, embroidery, and marker. 118.1 × 196.9 in.

This polyptych was conceived as the visual diary of a thirteen-week love affair. Each strip unfolds a sequence of days and nights, evoking the intensity of the experience. Embroidered fragments—drawn from a pop visual lexicon—become signs, charting the small events and shifting moods of each day. In certain passages, imagery gives way to verses by Rabindranath Tagore; in others, the empty field operates as a sign in its own right.

Altar, 1995. Patchwork and embroidery. 62.6 × 43.3 in.

In this work, the erotic and the sacred are intertwined. The composition engages with Gustave Courbet’s The Origin of the World (1866), in which the female sex assumes a central role. Here, that image is integrated into a ceremonial tabernacle, reaffirming the sacred dimension of life’s origin through fertilization and birth. The embroidered candles—at once votive and suggestively phallic—reinforce the tension between the spiritual and the corporeal.

Triangular Composition, 1996. Patchwork and embroidery. 72.8 × 35.4 in.

This work explores the complexity of a love triangle. Set within a metaphysical landscape drawn from De Chirico, three figures compose a scene defined by duality. One male figure commands attention through its luminosity; the other emerges as a dark presence, blending into the landscape. The artist thus evokes the coexistence of contrasting qualities of desire and affection—contradictory emotions that challenge the ideals of purity and simplicity traditionally ascribed to feminine love.

The Lovers, 2000. Patchwork and embroidery. 79.1 × 35.4 in.

This work draws a parallel between Akhenaten and Nefertiti—the celebrated couple of ancient Egypt—and a contemporary relationship marked by misunderstanding and adversity. The scene is framed by columns and the Ankh, symbol of life and of the union of masculine and feminine, as the lovers hold each other bare-chested, exposing their full vulnerability. The work thus suggests the persistence of love—and of its divergences—as a universal and timeless human experience.

Applause, 2010. Hand embroidery. 64.6 × 31.9 in.

This work, rendered in a drawing-based idiom, depicts a nude woman standing on stage before an audience. The figure conceals a brain behind her back—a gesture that evokes, and simultaneously subverts, the bouquet of flowers traditionally presented to actresses. The nudity underscores a sense of fragility, while suggesting, with quiet humor, the subterfuge that shields her from the social prejudices surrounding female intelligence.

Mandorla, 2018. Patchwork, embroidery, and appliqué. 56.3 × 39.4 in. 

This work reinterprets the mandorla—the aureole that, in medieval tradition, surrounds sacred figures—through a contemporary sensibility. In place of Christ, Alpízar positions the body of a woman in an expansive, joyous stance, surrounded by luminous dots and vegetal motifs. Without relinquishing its symbolic ambiguity, the work proposes an image of freedom, affirming a link between nature and the generative power of the feminine body.

Interior with Shipwreck, 2000. Patchwork and embroidery. 75.2 × 40.6 in. 

The title of this work alludes to Amelia Peláez’s Interior with Columns, while the central scene appropriates Hokusai’s iconic The Great Wave, shifting its meaning toward the shipwreck unfolding within it. The image evokes the domestic space and introduces a tension between interior and exterior, the intimate and the uncontrollable. The tapestry speaks to the losses, and displacements of contemporary Cuba, and to the ways in which that collective experience bears down on individuals and families.

The Excessive Light, 2003. Patchwork and embroidery. 55.1 × 35 in.

This work is a tribute to Cuban artist Antonia Eiriz, whose expressionist and critical practice left a deep mark on the art of her country. The composition, unsettling in character, presents a central figure—exposed and vulnerable—surrounded by fragmentary images that recall the intense visual universe of her work. The title, drawn from a verse by Eliseo Diego, alludes to a revelatory light, to the lucid, penetrating gaze Eiriz cast upon her social reality.

The Virgin of the Dry Tree, 2004. Patchwork and embroidery. 52.4 × 34.6 in.

This work appropriates a painting of the same name by Petrus Christus, a Flemish Gothic master. Alpízar replaces the original Virgin with the Virgin of Charity of Cobre, patron saint of Cuba, placing her within an environment of dry branches that take on symbolic intensity. The artist has stated that “Cuba is a dry tree, Cuba no longer bears fruit”—a reflection on faith, loss, and hope against the backdrop of her country’s profound social crisis.

Memory, 2005. Sewn fabric and appliqué with personal objects. Approx. 27.6 × 19.7 in.

Conceived as a container of memories, this apron brings together small objects and affective traces of deep emotional significance to the artist. Each compartment is an intimate repository where memory is carefully held. The translucent fabric adds a blurred, fragile quality that speaks to the nature of recollection. The work addresses memory as an affective archive—one that takes on particular resonance in contexts of displacement and migration.

In Heat, 2005. Snap fasteners on corduroy fabric. Approx. 27.6 × 19.7 in.

Alpízar constructs an image of powerful symbolic charge from a pattern of snap fasteners arranged in a spiral. The composition recalls the Swadhisthana chakra, associated with sexuality and located in the lower abdomen, evoking the vital energy linked to desire and fertility. Through an apparently abstract visual language, the exclusive use of the female part of the snap introduces a subtle yet direct reading of feminine sexuality and bodily receptivity.

A Few Small Nips!, 2005. Patchwork and razor cuts. Approx. 27.6 × 19.7 in.

This work addresses domestic violence through a frontal image of the female body, interrupted by cuts that pierce the textile surface. Executed upon a carefully elaborated ground, these violent gestures rupture the work, making damage a constitutive part of the image. The title, borrowed from a work by Frida Kahlo, introduces a disturbing dimension that underscores the normalization of abuse—a forceful metaphor for the violence inflicted upon the body.

Fishing Tackle, 2004–2012. Assemblage of used bras from friends and neighbors. Approx. 86.6 × 70.9 in.

This work emerges from a prior process of collection that is fundamental to its meaning. The artist gathered used bras from friends and neighbors, activating a network of exchanges in which trust, intimacy, and cooperation became the material of the work. The assembly configures a web that evokes, with humor and irony, a fishing net—a collective device where material precarity interweaves with forms of everyday solidarity.

Yurisleydis, 2005. Sewn fabric with batting. Life-size

From its title, this figure evokes the Cuban context of the 1990s—the “Special Period”—when invented names proliferated alongside acute material scarcity. The work alludes to the harsh living conditions that pushed many women to confront extreme decisions in order to survive. Made from available materials and rough stitching, the figure emphasizes helplessness and abandonment. Its nudity exposes a vulnerable body, marked by an extreme social context.

Pincushion, 2005. Sewn fabrics with stuffing. 5.9 × 11.8 × 7.9 in.

This object, typical of the practice of sewing, is reframed by Alpízar as a form charged with meaning. Conceived functionally “to receive pricks,” the pincushion becomes here a metaphor for normalized dynamics of aggression. Resolved as a torso—a classical subject in sculpture—and pierced by multiple pins, the volume articulates a tension between functionality and bodily image, suggesting a reflection on the subtle forms of violence that persist even within the everyday.

Niké, 2024. Patchwork and embroidery. 38 × 25 in.

The Noise, 2024. Patchwork and embroidery. 38 × 25 in. 

Amazon, 2024. Patchwork and embroidery. 38 × 25 in.

These works belong to the series Gray Cloths, in which Alpízar addresses the fractures brought on by the Cuban crisis of the 1990s. Conceived as a narrative sequence, the pieces articulate distinct scenes of displacement and loss, where the female body appears upon unstable structures within an indeterminate space. In Niké, the figure—caught between impulse and restraint—embodies an experience of uprootedness and separation; in The Noise, the onset of rupture is suggested, as social stability begins to crack; in Amazon, the female body alludes to survival strategies marked by vulnerability.

Katherine Chacón

Curatorial text and exhibition wall texts for Mayra Alpízar. Textile, Intimate Matter, held from June 11 to July 30, 2026, in Gallery C at Miami International Fine Arts (MIFA), Miami.