The Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA) is pleased to present Magali Lara: Stitched to the Body, an exhibition that examines a key moment in the career of pioneering Mexican artist Magali Lara (b. 1956). Lara emerged in the 1970s alongside a generation of women artists who expanded the second-wave feminist assertion that “the personal is political.” Featuring more than fifty works, this exhibition marks the first large-scale solo presentation of Lara’s work in New York, reflecting her sustained engagement with narratives of identity, intimacy, and domesticity, as well as her commitment to reshaping feminist art in Mexico through an interdisciplinary approach to art-making.
Through works produced between 1977 and 1995, this exhibition explores tensions between interior and exterior, private and public, secrecy and exposure in Lara’s practice. Across paintings, drawings, collages, photostats, and artist’s books, Lara blends visual and poetic languages to craft fragmented yet distinct contemplations on individuality. Her later paintings feature fluid, organic compositions where branching and rooting lines evoke a permeable body susceptible to perpetual change. Through meditations on growth and renewal, loss and decay, her works become traces of an inner landscape—an external world viewed from within, or intimacy glimpsed from afar.
Lara’s drawings and collages similarly engage with the shifting relationship between self and society. Through layering and repetition, her performative sequences build subtly shifting perspectives, capturing the elusiveness of self-definition while inviting new understandings of subjectivity. Domestic scenes—strewn with clothing and floral motifs—evoke bodily presence through absence and memory. By resisting direct representation, Lara subverts traditional associations between femininity and still life, transforming personal experience into a reflection on vulnerability, desire, and loss.
In deconstructing identity to reimagine selfhood, Lara turns introspection into a radical act of resistance. Her work reflects a generation of Latin American women artists who redefined feminine expression, harnessing the body’s desires, emotions, and contradictions to create new ways of expressing intimacy.
The exhibition features some of Lara’s most defining works, including the Ventanas series (1977–78), the Frida collages (1978), Objetos (1981), De lo amoroso, personal, confidencial, etcétera (1982), Historias de casa (1984–86), Ramificaciones (1995), Lealtad (1980–81), and Cocinar hombres (1984–85). Deeply introspective yet outward-looking, her practice maps emotional, domestic, and literary terrains that are at once intimate and profoundly resonant within the history of contemporary Latin American art.
On view from April 26 to August 23, 2025, Magali Lara: Stitched to the Body is curated by the ISLAA curatorial team, with special thanks to Clara Prat-Gay, curatorial assistant. It is accompanied by an original booklet featuring texts by Magali Lara and Madeline Murphy Turner, designed by Luiza Dale, ISLAA’s graphic designer in residence.
selected artworks
Árbol medieval, 1992
Luego lo lavo, from the series Historias de casa, 1984
Untitled, from the series Ventanas, 1977
Columna rota, from the series Frida, 1978
No recuerdo nada, from the series Objetos, 1981
(b. Mexico, 1956) is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and educator working across painting, drawing, and mixed media. She began her studies at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Visuales in Mexico City in 1976, later earning a degree in visual arts from the Universidad de Guadalajara and a master of fine arts from the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos in 2011. Her interest in the French livre d’artiste—a practice that gives equal importance to text and image—shaped her artistic and literary trajectory, leading her to often intertwine image and writing to reflect her lived experiences.
During her early career, Lara became deeply involved in women’s rights in Mexico, at a time when the second-wave feminist movement was gaining momentum. Feminist theory and practice became integral to her work, influencing her artistic process through an auto-archival approach.
Early series such as Ventanas and Frida saw Lara implement domestic imagery and repetition, with household objects and interior spaces becoming central subjects in her works on paper. Through methodical self-documentation, she developed a unique visual language to navigate not only her sense of self but also her relationship to other women artists. During this period, Lara collaborated with artists such as Lourdes Grobet and writer Carmen Boullosa, among other cultural figures, illustrating artist’s books and various publications throughout the 1980s.
In 1982, Lara began the series De lo amoroso, personal, confidencial, etcétera, which consists of forty paper collages featuring her iconic lip prints. In this series, cropped hazy black-and-white portraits are cut and pasted into layered compositions with red smooches, smudged fingerprints, and fractured pieces of paper. Writing appears as a recurring element, with handwritten poetic notes layered over the images, crossed out by bold black marks and rewritten.
From botanical arrangements in her series Ramificaciones (1995) to recognizable household items in her series Historias de casa (1984) and Objetos (1981), Lara uses these motifs to express her innermost emotions. Vulnerability is intentionally recorded through corporeal prints and images, while experimentation introduces bouts of spontaneity in each work. What Lara presents transcends a simple understanding of the intimate self, instead mining the raw essence of personhood.
Tue–Sat: 12–6 PM Sun–Mon: Closed
Tue–Sat: 12–6 PM Sun–Mon: Closed
