Visiting Artist Natalia Arbelaez

Natalia Arbelaez tells narratives about her Colombian family's immigration, the pre-Columbian South American presence, and her American latchkey, after-school cartoon childhood. All of these stories work together to create a multicomponent self-portrait of Arbelaez’ experience as a Mestizo Colombian-American hybrid. Mining tidbits from historical research, familial narratives, and cartoon culture, she creates surreal stories in clay much in the way Gabriel Garcia Márquez did with words, autobiographically narrating history with its ups and downs, its humor and tears.

For Arbelaez, making her work is an act of revealing undervalued histories from Latin American, Amerindian, and women of color. These identities are lost through conquest, migration, and time, then gained through family, culture, and exploration, and finally passed down through tradition, preservation, and genetic memory. She has found value in her histories and aims to help preserve her culture by honoring them through her work.