Installation by Amalia Mesa-Bains
Portrait of artist Amalia Mesa-Bains

Amalia Mesa-Bains

Amalia Mesa-Bains is an artist and cultural critic sho has worked to define Chicano and Latino art in the United Stated and Latin America. Mesa-Bains is best known for her large-scale installations and interpretations of traditional chicano altars and ofrendas. 

 

Her work explores Mexican American women’s spiritual practice, addresses colonial and imperial histories, the recovery of cultural memory, and their roles in identity formation. She also uses aesthetic strategies as ways to express experience historicall associated with Mexican American women and as sites for Chicana feminist reclamation. Mesa-Bains was born in San Clara, CA. She is a MacArthur Foundation fellow. Her work is included in numerous public collections including San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, D.C.

Artist News

Installation view of Amalia Mesa-Bains "Circle of Ancestors" at the Berkeley Art Museum
Traveling Retrospective

The Cheech, Riverside, CA

Amalia Mesa-Bains: Archaeology of Memory 

March 1 – August 3, 2025

Award

National Academy of Design

Class of 2024 National Academicians

 

Artist Spotlight

National Gallery of Art: The Collective Memory of Amalia Mesa-Bains

Story by Yinka Elujoba, Sept. 2024

Read HERE

Press for Traveling Retrospective
Exhibition Catalog

Amalia Mesa-Bains: Archeology of Memory

Essays by Laura E. Pérez & Maria Esther Fernández / Published by University of California Press

ORDER HERE

Watch

"Amalia Mesa-Bains: In Her Own Worlds," 2022. Directed by Raymond Telles and Daniel Telles

Selected Work

Exhibitions

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