Karla García
Artist
Artist Statement
Leveraging clay as my primary medium, I craft sculptures of flora that symbolize not only my profound connection to the earth below and around us but also to my cherished Mexican cultural heritage. My sculptural installations forge a symbolic link between plants and the environments they inhabit. Through my installations, I invite viewers to contemplate the profound interconnectedness of nature and our human experience. My sculptures are crafted through coil-building and hand-pinching techniques, shaping them to capture their distinctive essence, and leaving the marks of my hands visibly present. Some of my sculptures undergo a firing process, while others remain in their raw, ephemeral state, purposefully evoking the enduring and shared nature of the land we share.
Public Art: Seed the Future, 2023
Trail Drivers Park, Fort Worth, Texas.
The Range
A group exhibition co-curated by 12.26 Gallery and The The Valley Taos
June 10 - July 19, 2023
12.26 Gallery
150 Manufacturing St #205, Dallas, TX 75207
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"La Línea Imaginaria" was originally exhibited simultaneously at the Chamizal Museum of Archeology and History and the Chamizal National Memorial joining both Juarez, Mexico, and El Paso, Texas, from August 12, through November 30, 2022. See the project here.
Artist Statement:
The same desert landscape that I reinterpret through sculpture and drawings surrounds El Paso and Juarez. Cacti forms from the Chihuahuan Desert are created with raw terracotta clay to honor the borderland, the place of my upbringing. The paths between the sister cities of this place follow a borderline that we cross back and forth to see our families and friends, to work, and live. I call this the imaginary line where cultural identity is shared in these two sister cities.
Each cactus form is coil-built, pinched, and left in its ephemeral state. I embrace the roughness of the marks left by my hands to create a visceral response to each form. Without spines, the sculptures appear vulnerable, but to me, they exist as part of the land, teaching and reminding us of our personal and cultural history and being a part of the land.
La Línea Imaginaria, 2022. A project by Karla García. Photo credit: Alejandro Bringas.
Corsicana Artist Residency, 2021
Land Acknowledgement
Born and raised in Juárez, México and El Paso, Texas, artist Karla García is a descendant of Spanish settlers and Native ancestry from the Chihuahua region in Mexico. Although her indigenous familial knowledge is generally lost to her family, García honors and acknowledges the ancestral lands of the native communities in this region. According to the research of the University of Texas at El Paso, Native American communities include:
Lipan Apache, Mescalero Apache, Piro, Manso, Suma, Jumano, Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, Piro/Manso/Tiwa Indian Tribe of the Pueblo of San Juan de Guadalupe, and Tortugas Pueblo, the Carrizo & Comecrudo, Coahuiltecan, Caddo, Tonkawa, Comanche, Alabama-Coushatta, Kickapoo, and the peoples of Chihuahua and northern Mexico: the Rarámuri, Tepehuan, Wixarrika and Nahuatlaca peoples.
