Consuelo Jimenez Underwood

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood was born in Sacramento, CA, the daughter of migrant agricultural workers, a Chicana mother and a father of Huichol Indian descent. During this time, Jimenez Underwood developed her unique tri-cultural perspective: Chicana/Indigenous/American. Using this voice, Jimenez Underwood interweaves themes and imagery that reflect and revisit social memories. In the artist's words, “Over thirty years ago, when ‘craft vs. art' was the most divisive issue in the arts, I discovered and established my 'authentic artistic voice,' and refocused my artistic studies from the paintbrush and pigments to needle and thread. Empowered by the voices of my Indigenous maternal ancestors, I began to cross the intellectual borders that separated the hand and the mind (craft) from the spirit (fine art). My work reflects personal border experiences: the interconnectedness of societies, insisting on beauty in the struggle, and celebrating the notion of seeing this world through my tri-cultural lens.”

Jimenez Underwood received her BA and MA from San Diego State University, San Diego, CA. In 1987, she received an MFA in Art from San Jose University, San Jose, California, where she immediately assumed the role of Professor and Director of the Fiber Art Department for over two decades.

In 2022, the artist was awarded the Latinx Artist Fellowship, a first-of-its-kind initiative that recognizes 15 of the most compelling Latinx visual artists working in the United States today. Her work is the subject of Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Art, Weaving, Vision, a comprehensive analysis of her work and impact on feminist textile art history published by Duke University Press. Jimenez Underwood has also participated in numerous notable group exhibitions, such as Something Beautiful: Reframing La Colección, El Museo Del Barrio, New York, NY; and Open Ended: SFMOMA’s Collection 1900 to Now, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA. She has been featured and reviewed in publications like Hyperallergic and The New York Times. In 2024, guest curator Beverly Adams selected her for the Artpace San Antonio International Artist-in-Residence program. Recently, her work has been acquired by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Museo del Barrio, New York, NY; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA; and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, among others.

Ruiz-Healy Art is pleased to present Consuelo Jimenez Underwood at the Armory Show 2023. Jimenez Underwood has been exhibiting her work since the 1980s, choosing to focus on the fiber arts at a time when weaving was considered “craft,” not “art.” As the daughter of a Huichol-descended father who weaved and a Mexican-American mother who embroidered, it has always been important to the artist to continue these ancestral practices and insist on their legitimacy in the artistic sphere. Her initial goal as an artist was to become a “footnote in history,” but in recent years she has far surpassed her ambition. In 2022, Duke University Press published an anthology on her decades-long career, titled Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Art, Weaving, Vision, and she was awarded the Latinx Artist Fellowship the same year.