Rosemary Meza-DesPlas

Artist Statement

I am a feminist artist and cultural investigator with an expansive creative practice that centers material culture within gendered narratives. Fiber art, drawing, installation, painting, performance art, and video art reflect imagery of the feminine. An American/ Spanish/Indigenous artist, my artwork is informed by a bicultural perspective shaped by literary writings on cultural criticism, sociology of culture and cultural advocacy.

Amplifying the voices of women, my work reflects the female experience. The tenacity of my eight aunts in the face of personal tragedies and adversities was an early inspiration; their narratives contributed to my embrace of feminist ideology.

Selfhood and culture manifest in my traditional art forms of painting, drawing, and sculpture. I reinvented my own artwork into specialty fabrics and embedded them into installations, performance art and video. Multimedia installations are created with a nod to concepts introduced by Amalia Mesa-Bains in her seminal essay Domesticana: The Sensibility of Chicana Rasquache.

I forefront myself in performance art and video works; thereby, alluding to the multiplex experience of being an American, Indigenous, Latina woman. My poetry anchors the performance art and video works. Academic research and writings reinforce thematic inquiries into gender topics, socio-political issues, and cultural talking points.