Visiting Artist: Esteban Cabeza de Baca

Part of the Tuesday Night MFA Lecture Series at Boston University School of Visual Arts. Free and open to the public. Fundamentally influenced by growing up on the US-Mexico border, Esteban Cabeza de Baca draws largely from his personal experiences and the histories embedded within the American landscape. Of Mexican and Native American heritage, Cabeza de Baca’s work in painting, sculpture, and installation is often shaped toward capturing and reimagining lost cultural histories, as tools for unlearning and reimagining the past. Blurring the boundaries between abstract and figurative modes of representation, Cabeza de Baca’s paintings are rendered in accumulated layers. Employing a broad range of painterly techniques, pictorial space is transcended and amplified. Rooted in a deep sense of place and purpose, Cabeza de Baca’s work confronts colonialist histories of erasure to unveil and complicate suppressed histories of the American West. A recent Columbia University MFA graduate, Cabeza de Baca has completed residencies at the LMCC Workspace Program, New York, NY; the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program, New York, NY; and a Byrdcliffe Residency, in Woodstock, New York, NY. Recent solo exhibitions include Esteban Cabeza de Baca, Gaa Projects Cologne, Germany; Worlds without Borders, Boers-Li Gallery, New York, NY; Unlearn, Fons Welters Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands; and Bluer than a sky weeping bones, Gaa Gallery, Provincetown, MA. Group exhibitions include The Complexities of Unity, Yale University, New Haven, CT; Home/Not Home, Colorado Convention Center, Denver, CO; Water Is Life: Indigenous Peoples Day in Support against Dakota Access Pipeline, Salvage Station, Asheville, NC; The Narrative Figure, David Richard Gallery, Santa Fe, NM; Scent, Dickinson Gallery, New York, NY; and Manhattan TODAY, Leroy Neiman Art Center, New York, NY. Cabeza de Baca currently lives and works in Queens, NY.