Works by Pilar Agüero-Esparza
01/08/2026-02/07/2026
Cut/Woven/Spoken surveys the work of UCSC Art Department Alumna Pilar Agüero-Esparza. Her artistic inquiry begins with the materials and processes inherent in growing up within a shoemaking family. In the craft tradition of huarache-making (Mexican indigenous sandals), her current practice revolves around repetitive gestures like the weaving of leather, the hammering of nails, and the meticulous painting of finishing details. The tangible presence and symbolic potential of these materials and gestures inspire her to analyze the creation of objects, their makers, and the physical or social conditions involved in their production.
The aesthetic potency of weaving carries a distinct visual presence, readily signaling the handmade. The specificity of leather craft conveys ethnic roots and indigenous aesthetics. Since 2010, she has been exploring the material potential of combining leather with her painting practice. It was through experimenting with weaving leather that abstraction began to make sense to her as a visual strategy.
By melding abstraction with the making strategies learned in childhood, Agüero-Esparza aims for a radical authenticity that generates tension along with material freshness and contradiction. This preoccupation with materials and meaning forms a dialogue about art versus craft. Employing the language of abstraction, she delves into the tropes of Color Theory, blending a skin-tone palette with prismatic colors to highlight the complexities of skin color. While her chosen color palette is constructed as ‘neutral,’ she conveys hierarchical power dynamics represented in the chromatic gamut of beige, brown, and black. She aims for viewers to perceive her works as ‘racialized abstractions’ and prompt contemplation of social dynamics and colorism within our culture.
Through her artworks, Agüero-Esparza invites viewers to contemplate the inequities of race, gender, and class by presenting them with a specific cultural and aesthetic experience. In representing ideas of ‘othering’ and conditions of ‘otherness,’ she draws attention to marginalized cultural and aesthetic experiences, seeking to validate and acknowledge their power.
Pilar Agüero-Esparza is a mixed media artist raised in Boyle Heights, in East Los Angeles. She works in painting and spatial processes through which she explores issues of colorism and social hierarchies while engaging with ideas of materiality, meaning, and the handmade object as entry points for discussions on race, equity and empathy. She received a BA in Art from the University of California Santa Cruz, and MFA in Spatial Art from San Jose State University. Agüero-Esparza has exhibited her work in numerous institutions including the San Jose Museum of Art, Triton Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, The Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, MACLA, Palo Alto Arts Center, Galeria de la Raza, the Lawrence Arts Center, the De Young Museum, Cabrillo Gallery at Cabrillo College, and the Montalvo Arts Center.