Lucero Vargas-Almeida
Madre Agua/ Mother water, 2026
Reclaimed family textiles, vintage scarf, Colombian jute/fique, embroidery, hand stitching, thread, and mixed textile media 217 × 134 cm
Madre Agua / Mother Water grows from my poem of the same name and from the understanding that water is both origin and transformation. Inherited and vintage textiles form a dry mountainous landscape reaching toward water, while the piece evokes water in its many states—mist, rain, snow, sea, calm, and storm. Water changes shape without ceasing to be water. The work asks what we might learn from that capacity: to adapt, to move through change, to endure, and to become without losing ourselves.
Lucero Vargas-Almeida
Voces/ Voices, 2026
Recovered and inherited textiles, natural wood, braids, lace, ribbon, buttons, bells, thread, embroidery, hand stitching, and mixed textile media 58 × 110 × 12 cm
VOCES / VOICES explores how people create alternative forms of communication in moments of repression, displacement, or silencing. The work draws inspiration from historical examples such as the braided routes and messages associated with women of Palenque, Colombia, the secret Nüshu writing tradition developed among women in China, and Chilean arpilleras used to communicate lived realities under dictatorship. Through layered textiles, hair, braids, stitching, and found objects, the piece reflects on textile art as a language of resistance, memory, survival, and collective voice. For me, making textiles is also a way of speaking when conventional language is not enough.
Lucero Vargas-Almeida
Después del vacío desbordante / After the Overflowing Void, 2026
Recovered and inherited textiles, blouse sewn by my mother, silk threads preserved for more than 20 years, hand stitching, embroidery, and mixed textile media 140 × 104 cm
Después del vacío desbordante / After the Overflowing Void is connected to a poem of the same name and reflects on absence, birth, and presence. Using inherited and recovered textiles, including a blouse sewn by my mother and silk threads preserved for more than two decades, the work explores what can emerge after rupture and emptiness. Suspended threads, open space, and layered textile elements create a sense of stillness and quiet presence. In exhibition, viewers have often described the work in terms of peace and presence—responses that resonate with the piece’s exploration of what remains, what is born, and what becomes visible after the void.
Lucero Vargas-Almeida
Lullaby for the World / Canción de cuna para el mundo, 2026
Reclaimed family textiles, embroidery, mixed fabrics, maternal vintage buttons, curved bamboo, thread, and mixed textile media 85 × 97 cm; approximately 14 cm relief
Lullaby for the World / Canción de cuna para el mundo is inspired by a melody composed by Ian Macksin and by the symbolism of a Ukrainian lullaby in which red represents joy and black represents sadness. For that reason, the world in this piece appears in red and black, holding both tenderness and pain. Through reclaimed family textiles, embroidery, suspended elements, curved bamboo, and hand construction, the work evokes the intimate gesture of a lullaby—not as escape, but as an act of care, protection, and hope. The piece imagines the possibility of holding a wounded world with the same tenderness with which we hold a child, allowing fragility, music, sorrow, and connection to become forms of resistance.
Lucero Vargas-Almeida
Ambigüedad de lo sagrado / The Ambiguity of the Sacred, 2026
Nearly all the materials come from my own family history: fabrics and ribbons from my mother, my son’s shoe, and my own hair preserved for more than two decades 94 × 136 × 5 cm
The Ambiguity of the Sacred questions what we choose to protect, revere, or consider untouchable when ideology, nation, technology, doctrine, moral certainty, or even our idea of humanity begins to weigh more than a human life. From a distance, the mantle may suggest shelter, home, or the sacred. Up close, other layers emerge: codes, signs of erasure, closed eyes, hunger, dryness, and a child’s shoe crossed by a red thread. Nearly all the materials come from my own family history: fabrics and ribbons from my mother, my son’s baby shoe, and my own hair preserved for more than two decades. That intimacy makes the questions unavoidable: What if that loss were mine? What if that child were my son? What if that family were yours? What is truly sacred, if not life?
Lucero Vargas-Almeida
Mutación onírica de un ecosistema / Oneiric Mutation of an Ecosystem, 2026
Recycled artist's denim, recovered and found textile materials, embroidery, thread, hand stitching, and mixed textile media 64 × 118 × 3 cm
Mutación onírica de un ecosistema / Oneiric Mutation of an Ecosystem asks what happens when we stop questioning what once seemed impossible. In this altered landscape, snow appears on a palm tree, the sun seems to emerge from water, and a house stands upside down. These absurdities may feel dreamlike at first, but the work questions how easily the abnormal can become normalized through repetition and adaptation. Through recycled denim, layered textile surfaces, embroidery, and hand stitching, the piece reflects on environmental disruption, perception, and the fragile boundary between adaptation and acceptance. What happens when we stop questioning what once seemed impossible? Is this landscape a dream, a warning, or a possible future? What are we capable of adapting to?
Lucero Vargas-Almeida
Micelios del silencio que sostienen la dicotomía del mundo / Mycelia of Silence Sustaining the Dichotomy of the World, 2026
Textile arpillera; reclaimed fabrics, threads, buttons, mesh, and mixed textile materials 64 × 118 cm
Micelios del silencio que sostienen la dicotomía del mundo / Mycelia of Silence Sustaining the Dichotomy of the World is connected to a poem and draws a parallel between natural mycelial networks and human resilience, especially among women. Just as mycelia remain connected beneath the surface, sharing strength and sustaining life even when unseen, human beings can also remain deeply connected despite isolation, distance, or silence. Through stitched threads, layered textiles, mesh, buttons, and organic forms, the work reflects on invisible bonds, endurance, and the quiet force of connection. It speaks to the possibility that even when we are not physically together, we may still nourish one another, sustain hope, and create change through the unseen networks that hold us.
Lucero Vargas-Almeida
Raíces imperceptibles / Imperceptible Roots, 2026
Reclaimed family textiles, curtain fabric preserved for more than 18 years, blouse sewn by the artist’s mother, maternal vintage buttons, thread, embroidery, hand stitching, and mixed textile media 127 × 107 × 3 cm
Raíces imperceptibles / Imperceptible Roots emerged beneath the immense trees of La Recoleta in Buenos Aires, where their exposed roots created an unexpected sense of shelter. I imagined those roots continuing invisibly beneath the earth—reaching trees in Colombia and connecting me to my mother, who is no longer physically present, yet whose embrace I could still feel. Connected to my poem of the same name, the work brings body, tree, water, and inherited textiles into a single living network. A blouse sewn by my mother, her vintage buttons, and family fabrics become part of roots that cross geography, memory, and generations. The work asks us to consider the invisible connections that continue to nourish and sustain us, even across distance and absence.
Lucero Vargas-Almeida
Versos del alma azul / Blue Soul Verses, 2025
Textile collage, reclaimed fabrics, hand embroidery, hand stitching, and mixed textile media; mounted on a skirt sewn by the artist’s mother Textile work: 36 × 25 cm; mounted on skirt: approximately 70 × 55 cm
Versos del alma azul / Blue Soul Verses is inspired by my poem of the same name, in which a crescent moon, a firefly, blue sea-stars, and underwater landscapes become part of a poetic journey through love, freedom, and transformation. The textile work moves through layers of sky, earth, and sea, translating the imagery of the poem into fabric, embroidery, and color. It is mounted on a skirt sewn by my mother, allowing her handmade garment to become both support and memory. The work brings poetry, textile, maternal inheritance, and my own artistic identity into a single piece, where love is not possession but a shared movement toward freedom, truth, and becoming.
Lucero Vargas-Almeida
Cartografía de la Luciérnaga Azul / Cartography of a Blue Firefly, 2025
Reclaimed textiles, traditional embroidered Oaxaca dress, hand stitching, embroidery, recycled fabrics, and mixed textile media 130 × 97 cm
Cartografía de la Luciérnaga Azul / Cartography of a Blue Firefly is a textile installation composed of three works—A las manos / To the Hands, Luciérnaga Azul / Blue Firefly, and Cumbia—integrated into a traditional embroidered Oaxaca dress. The dress is not merely a support, but an active part of the work, carrying its own cultural history into a larger map of identity. Together, the pieces bring movement, poetry, memory, gesture, music, migration, and cultural inheritance into a single visual body. The work becomes a living cartography of belonging, tracing how identity is shaped through what we inherit, what we carry, what we encounter, and what we transform along the way.
