Details:
① Artwork:
Para Que Me Mires
This fabric composition joins together an array of patterns and striking colors to fashion bodily forms. This work explores both cultural hybridity and pride, as well as the competing desires to assimilate and to be seen. The artist was born in Milan, Italy to Colombian and Peruvian parents, later relocating to Texas as a teenager; drawing from these experiences, Capron's work recognizes the challenges of toggling between various cultures and geographies. The artist's multilayered textile works emphasize that each person consists of several identities—some repressed and some exalted.
Capron’s practice explores how clothing is used as a marker of class, gender and cultural identity. For her work, the artist privileges off-cut fabrics—centering materials that have been cut and rejected as excess. This choice in materials becomes a metaphor for highlighting objects undervalued by society. Capron contrasts common fibers like cotton with more luxurious ones like silk—thereby addressing material hierarchies in art and fashion that parallel the power dynamics within class and gender. Capron's work examines the friction of mistranslations, for example of failing to “dress the part” or having one’s pride in self-expression overcast by exoticization.
Specs:
Loose hanging strings are intentional, and used to mimic dripping paint or hair.
③ Artist:
Maria A. Guzmán Capron’s work combines hand-sewn textiles and paints to fashion bodily forms in an array of patterns and striking colors. The artist’s work addresses material hierarchies in art and fashion—parallel to the power dynamics within class and gender—by contrasting common fibers like cotton with more luxurious ones like silk. Drawing on her own experience of toggling between various cultures and geographies, Capron’s work explores cultural hybridity, pride and the competing desires to assimilate and be seen.
BIO:
Maria A. Guzmán Capron was born in Milan, Italy in 1981 to Colombian and Peruvian parents, and relocated to Texas as a teenager. The artist received an MFA from California College of the Arts in the Bay Area of California in 2015 and a BFA from the University of Houston in Texas in 2004.
Solo exhibitions of Capron’s work have taken place at: Shulamit Nazarian in Los Angeles, California (2021); Texas State Galleries in San Marcos, Texas (2021); Premier Junior in San Francisco, California (2020); Roll Up Project in Oakland, California (2020); and Guerrero Gallery in San Francisco, California (2018).
Group exhibitions of Capron’s work have taken place at: the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, California (2022); Berkeley Art Center in Berkeley, California (2022); Shulamit Nazarian in Los Angeles, California (2021); pt.2 Gallery in Oakland, California (2021 and 2020); NIAD Art Center in Richmond, California (2020); CULT Aimee Friberg Exhibitions in San Francisco, California (2019); Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art in Buffalo, New York (2019); Deli Gallery in Brooklyn, New York (2018); and Mana Contemporary in Chicago, Illinois (2018).
Capron’s work has been covered in Hyperallergic, Variable West, Bomb Magazine, Elephant and Art in America.
Capron lives and works in Oakland, California.
