In his sculpture, ektor garcia incorporates influences from queer culture and handcraft traditions of Mexico, engaging personal identity and cultural lineage in works that challenge hierarchies around gendered and racialized labor.
Across textile, ceramics, and metalwork, frequently in combination with found materials, garcia reclaims cultural practices historically cast in diminutive roles, and reinscribes value to them through an intimate ritual process. Soft and hard, dense and porous, sharp and tender, the resulting objects are hybrid in nature, and evoke the body as a layered site of pleasure and pain, trauma and healing. Pieces are often reconfigured; textiles are made and unmade—undoing the knots as important as reknotting, reweaving to generate new points of connection and relation. His installations are similarly mutable, comprised of a group of objects reconfigured in various permutations depending on the space: densely arranged or sprawled across floors, and nestled within the supporting architecture.
At the Henry, garcia will work with faculty, staff, and students at the University of Washington’s Ceramic and Metal Arts Facility to create a series of new linked-chain sculptures made in ceramic, copper, and glass. These linked chains will create a dynamic constellation throughout the gallery, and emanate both strength and fragility as they suspend from ceiling to floor within the double-height volume of the space.
ektor garcia earned a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a MFA from Columbia University. He has completed residencies at Progetto, Puglia, Italy; International Studio and Curatorial Program, New York; Cove Park, Argyll and Bute, Scotland; and Ox-Bow, Saugatuck, Michigan. garcia has held solo exhibitions at the Sculpture Center, New York; and Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany, among others. His work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including at the Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art, China; New Museum, New York; El Museo del Barrio, New York; and Prospect, New Orleans.
Visitor Information: The Henry is open to the public 10 AM - 7 PM Thursday and 10 AM - 5 PM Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
Image information: ektor garcia, white tears, 2020. Mixed media. Courtesy of the artist and Prairie Chicago. Photo: Tim Mann.