For the past two years, Margarita Cabrera, born in Monterrey, Mexico, has lived and worked in San Antonio, Texas, where she is currently finalizing the creation of a monumental, collaborative community tree of life. Cabrera’s Árbol de la Vida: Voces de la Tierra, originally commissioned by San Antonio’s River Foundation, is a steel structure standing 40 feet tall and 80 feet in diameter and is slated for completion this May 2019. The “Árbol” sits near San Antonio’s Mission San Francisco de la Espada, and is the artist’s largest creation to date. It serves as a visual testament to Cabrera’s appreciation and belief in the local community, who partnered with the artist to create the tree of life, as well as to San Antonio’s mission history and ranching heritage.

Over the course of the last two years, Cabrera hosted numerous community meetings and taught instructional clay workshops, collaborating with locals, artists and non-professional artists, on what the project visually represented and would entail from conception to completion. The result is a mesmerizingly beautiful symbol of unity and history, reflective of the over 700 vibrant clay sculptures that adorn the tree branches, each created by a local resident and symbolic of their personal and familial histories. The clay ornaments cover Cabrera’s tree of life, visually depicting subjects ranging from fruit, vegetables, local industries, animals, and objects emblematic of the diverse communities of South Texas. The deep, collaborative spirit of this project symbolizes the passion behind Cabrera’s artistic philosophy, synergizing her creative energies as an arts leader and organizer ardently aware of and responding to the social-political zeitgeist of our times through practice and belief.

Cabrera is recognized for her sculpture and installations featuring a diverse range of media, including fabrics, steel, copper, wood and ceramics. The “Árbol”, however, highlights another key component of Cabrera’s career – her desire for and the importance of community collaboration and engagement. She is an educator and instructor on historical Mexican handicraft methods, encouraging those around her to learn by giving them agency and opportunity through her collaborative projects. Cabrera’s artwork, from her soft-sculpture border plants depicting various species of cacti and desert flora, to her ceramic tractors adorned with fragile butterflies, emphasize her concerns with social-political issues surrounding immigration, border politics, just work environments, and the importance of transforming the local community through art. She often engages with community members through her projects by including them in the act of creation, resulting in a collaborative, public work of art reflective of community energies and the surrounding environment. The “Árbol” is a masterpiece and just such a project – embodying Cabrera’s past and future as an artist and activist. Her projects give a voice to local communities and artists, encouraging their personal growth, artistic education, and support of each other.

Cabrera has moved frequently throughout her life and career, living in Utah, El Paso, Houston, and working as an assistant professor at the Arizona State University Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts in Tempe, AZ. Cabrera often felt a sense of isolation as a young immigrant living in Utah and turned to art as a means of dealing with these thoughts; later moving with her family to El Paso, she became aware of surmounting border politics and social-political issues as a high-school student, which would eventually fuel her artistic process and creative output. Cabrera pursued artistic studies and received her MFA from Hunter College in New York, NY (2007). Early exhibitions include collaborative projects at Houston’s Box 13 ArtSpace and the Houston Interfaith Worker Justice Center, who helped Cabrera engage with local immigrants that played a key role in the creation of her work Space in Between.

Forthcoming projects include the monumental installation and community collaborative project Árbol de la Vida: Voces de la Tierra in San Antonio, TX (discussed above, slated to open May 2019) and her upcoming Texas Artist of the Year exhibition with Art League Houston, Houston, TX (solo, September 7 – November 2, 2019). Her work is currently on view at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, LA (Margarita Cabrera, solo, presented at the Ogden by the Center for Southern Craft and Design, March 28 – May 12, 2019). Recent exhibitions include features at the Dallas Contemporary, Dallas, TX (It is Impossible to Cover the Sun with a Finger, solo, January 27 – March 17, 2019), and the Craft & Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles, CA (The U.S.-Mexico Border: Place, Imagination, and Possibility, group, September 10, 2017 – January 7, 2018).

In talking about her work, Cabrera states: “My work centers on social-political community issues including cultural identity, migration, violence, inclusivity, labor, and empowerment. I create sculptures made out of mediums ranging from steel, copper, wood, ceramics, and fabric. I have 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 just working conditions and the protection of immigrant rights. My emphasis is on creating a social consciousness through my work, generating solutions to these problems through my art and empowering all members of highly diverse communities.

In recent years, I have especially focused on community art collaborations, producing work that has engaged international and local communities in transformative practices. With these works, we have created art pieces that serve as cultural and historical artifacts that value and document the experiences, struggles, and achievements of those who have found their way, often through migration and exceptional sacrifice, to new places where they now work to contribute meaningfully within their communities. This work is both individually and collectively inspiring to all participants and local populations.”

Cabrera has exhibited her work with several galleries including Talley Dunn Gallery, Dallas TX; Ruiz-Healy Art, San Antonio, TX; 516 Arts, Albuquerque, NM; Sara Meltzer Gallery, New York, NY; Walter Maciel Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; and Snyderman-Works, Philadelphia, PA. Numerous Texas institutions of note have featured her artwork, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, and the El Paso Museum of Art in El Paso.

Outside of Texas, Cabrera’s work has been exhibited at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; Sweeney Art Gallery at the University of California, Riverside, CA; Sun Valley Center for the Arts, Ketchum, ID; and El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY. She is the recipient of numerous accolades, including the Knight Artist in Residence at the McColl Center for Art + Innovation in Charlotte, NC (2012), as well as a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant (2007). Cabrera’s artwork is in public collections throughout the nation, including: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA; and the El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso, TX.

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