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. Jimenez Underwood received her BA and MA from San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, and 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 more than 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. She is the subject of Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Art, Weaving Vision, a comprehensive analysis of her work and impact on feminist textile art history.

In the words of the artist, “Over thirty years ago, when “craft vs. art” was the most divisive issue in the arts, I discovered and established my “authentic artistic voice,” 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 struggle, and celebrating the notion of "seeing" this world through my tri-cultural lens.”

Her work is featured in numerous permanent collections: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Museo del Barrio, New York, NY; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago, IL; Mexican Fine Art Center Museum, Chicago, IL; Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY; National Hispanic Center for The Arts, Albuquerque, NM; Oakland Museum of California; Oakland, CA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA, 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.