Margarita Cabrera

Margarita Cabrera  is an assistant professor in the School of Art at Arizona State University. Her work alings with others working with socially engaged art in community with a critical focus on social justice.  Cabrera's work centers on social-political issues including cultural identity, migration, violence, inclusivity, labor, and empowerment. Cabrera creates sculptures made out of mediums ranging from steel, copper, wood, ceramics and fibers.  Her work helps people define their place and voice in the social and cultural dialogues evolving in their communities. For her 2016 exhibit "The Space in Between" at the Desert Botanical Garden's Ottosen Gallery, Cabrera created a workshop for immigrants from different Latino communities to build sculptures of native desert plants from the Southwestern United States. Using traditional Mexican sewing and embroidery techniques, Cabrera’s workshop participants stitched their stories of immigration, community and hardship into the fabric of discarded U.S. Border Patrol uniforms.  Cabrera was selected as the Texas Artist of the Year in 2019 and unveiled her public art community sculpture "Arbol de la Vida: Memorias y Voces de la Tierra" in San Antonio Texas. Recent exhitions include as solo show at the Dallas Contemporary, in Dallas, TX titled "It is imposible to cover the sun with one finger".  At the Ford Foundation Gallery, New York, NY, Cabrera participated in Perilous Bodies, and in "The Lotus is Spite of the Swamp" at the New Orleans "Prospect 4".  At the Art League Houston gallery, Cabrera presented "What Art Can Do" in fall of 2019.

Cabrera received an MFA from Hunter College in New York, NY. 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. Her work has been included in galleries such as 516Arts, Talley Dunn Gallery, Ruiz-Healy Gallery, Sara Meltzer Gallery, Walter Maciel Gallery, and Synderman-Works. In 2012, she was a recipient of the Knight Artist in Residence at the McColl Center for Visual Art in Charlotte, NC, and was also a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant.