Continuing CALA’s commitment to engaging audiences through dynamic virtual programming, CALA Presenta > Charlas is a series of conversations between Contemporary U.S. Latinx and Latin American artists with Executive Director and Curator Alana Hernandez. The conversation series give viewers the opportunity to remotely visit artists’ studios and hear more about their practice through informal conversations. Emphasizing CALA’s commitment to U.S. Latinx and artists in Latin America, these artist conversations explore the dynamism that exists within the Latinx and Latin American art communities. Featuring artists that span geographic locations in and outside of the United States, CALA Presenta > Charlas are presented monthly via Zoom.
Sarah Zapata is a Peruvian-American fabric artist and writer who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Born in Corpus Christi, Texas in 1988, Zapata was raised in the Dallas area. Zapata’s studio practice is firmly based in Fiber Arts, utilizing traditional weaving, coiling and latch-hook techniques to achieve very contemporary abstracted objects. Inspired by her Peruvian heritage and feminist theory, Zapata’s body of work addresses issues of labor, systems of power and control, Queerness, cultural relativism and the intersectionality of identity.
She has held solo exhibitions with Performance Space New York (NY), Deli Gallery (NY), el Museo del Barrio (NY), amongst others. Her work has been exhibited at the New Museum (NY), Museum of Art and Design (NY), Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art (NY), Boston University (MA), LAXART (CA), Paul Kasmin (NY), Arsenal Contemporary (NY), EFA Project Space (NY), Hudson Valley LGBTQ Community Center (NY). Zapata has also completed residencies at the Museum of Arts and Design (NY), MASS MoCA (MA), A-Z West (CA), and Wave Hill (NY). She has been the recipient of grants from the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the Dallas Museum of Art. Zapata is a 2019–2020 Literature Fellow with the Queer Art Mentorship program.