Margarita Cabrera Mexican, b. 1973

Cabrera’s work centers on social-political community issues including cultural identity, migration, violence, inclusivity, labor, and empowerment. She has worked on a number of collaborative projects at the intersection of contemporary art practices, indigenous Mexican folk art and craft traditions, and US-Mexico relations. In addition to studying and preserving endangered cultural and craft traditions, these projects have served as active investigations into the creation of fair and safe working conditions and the protection of immigrant rights.

Cabrera was born in México City and grew up in El Paso, Texas. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts degree at Hunter College New York. In recent years, Cabrera has split her practice between her individual work and art collaborations. Cabrera’s art collaborations produce work that engages communities through transformative practices on both sides of the Mexico/United States border.

Her most recent museum solo exhibitions include Margarita Cabrera: It is Impossible to Cover the Sun with a Finger, Dallas Contemporary, Dallas, TX; What Art Can Do: Margarita Cabrera – The Collaborative Act of Making, Art League Houston, Houston, TX; and Margarita Cabrera: Space in Between, Wellin Museum of Art, Hamilton College, Clinton, NY. Perilous Bodies, Ford Foundation Gallery, New York, NY; The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp at the New Orleans “Prospect 4” and The U.S.-Mexico Border: Place, Imagination, and Possibility at Los Angeles Craft & Folk Art Museum count as group exhibits where her work has recently been exhibited. 

Her work has been included in survey’s organized by, amongst others, Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Smithsonian Museum of American Art; Museum of Fine Arts Houston; Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; McNay Museum San Antonio; the Sweeney Art Center for Contemporary Art at the University of California, Riverside, and El Museo del Barrio, NYC. 

Cabrera is the recipient of the Knight Artist-in-Residence at the McColl Center for Visual Art in Charlotte, NC. and Artpace San Antonio International Artist-in-Residence. The artist is also a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grantee.  

Cabrera’s work is part of the permanent collection of more than twenty museums.