Uprooted Dreams is a work of art designed in the form of workshop production; it brings people together from three distinct communities: Austin’s Latino immigrant community, the craft-making community from Arrazola, Oaxaca, Mexico, and Austin’s Art Community. READ MORE >

By eliminating the border between performers and art audiences, Pulso y Martillo engages the immigrant and artist communities simultaneously in order to initiate an act of audience re-construction, towards the inclusion of unacknowledged entities. The lively spectacle is unveiled through its duration and compositional elements: sound, motion, memory, form, and pulse.
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Mexico Abre La Boca functions as a temporal and transportable vehicle, a taco stand, that closes the gap between two very distant markets: corporate and street vendors, which normally exist at opposite ends of the spectrum of globalized economies.
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Created by artist Margarita Cabrera, FLOREZCA is a for profit enterprise functioning as a multinational corporation that promotes cultural capital.
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On view January 16- February 18, 2010 at Box 13 Artspace in Houston, Texas

Margarita Cabrera with Esmeralda Perez, Teresa Sanchez Garay, Doris Lindo, Nora Oviedo, Carlos Calles, Miguel DeLuna, Maria Lopez, Candelaria Cabrera y Delfina Medina.

SPACE IN BETWEEN is a collaborative project in the form of a sewing and embroidery workshop at Houston’s Box 13 Gallery.

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My work continues an ongoing exploration of the defining economic and cultural relationships between the United States and Mexico. I am interested in creating an aesthetic platform for political and social-cultural consciousness as a means of survival. Many immigrants are living in constant fear of deportation don’t have the option to travel outside of the US for fear of not being allowed re-entry. They are missing a connection to their ethnic lineage, don’t speak Spanish, and many of them don’t know where their family’s come from. Anchored in no-man’s land, I see them as dislocated and incomplete on a physical and emotional level. READ MORE >

Arbor de la Vida

Shedding light on the impact of emigration and tourism on craft making traditions in Mexico, a life-size replica of a tractor [and farming tools] in clay, instead of a tree, embodies the Olmec theme that explains the origins of life, representing a means of survival for immigrant agricultural workers in the US.

Backpacks

Bicycles

Cars

Domestic and Appliances

Desert Plants

In Margarita Cabrera’s series of soft sculptures, threads left exposed serve as a reminder of the labor involved in the manufacturing of this subject matter. Sagging vinyl imbues the work with an anthropomorphic quality that references the harsh nature of worker’s realities.

Cabrera’s Artpace project, The Craft of Resistance, is the second in a series of works that explore the impact of border politics on Mexican craft-making traditions. The installation portrays the metamorphosis of Mexican tradition, history, and culture as a result of the current maquiladora-based economy. READ MORE >