Julieta Beltrán Lazo
My hometown is Guadalajara, Mexico, and that is where I am currently living and working.
For social media, I use Instagram @julieta_belazo and my website is https://julietabeltranlazo.com/
I mostly work with painting and embroidery, sometimes printmaking too, and I always incorporate writing processes in my practice. Some of these writings end up being pieces on their own, or parts of a pice; and others are merely part of the creative process that allows me to arrive at something more concrete.
In my work, I revise and re-imagine history. Through embroidering, painting, drawing, and writing, I examine my relationship to the celebrations and grievances that accompany Mexico’s recent history, approaching them from an effective subjectivity. My work mediates between lived experiences, fantasies and fears, news outlets, family archives, and popular culture.
(In a way I think of my work as a sensible and tactile way to approach and explore history and politics, and my relationship to them, or their intersections with my identity).
How does the region influence your art?
My region and upbringing immensely influence my practice and creative vision. On the one hand, much of the colors and textures I appreciate and crave for in my work, have to do with an emotional attachment I feel towards them as they remind me of Mexico, so many of the things that inspire me and influence my aesthetics are things that I grew up seeing, and they relate to a desire to recreate something that is familiar and homely to me. On the other hand, my region influences me conceptually, both in terms of what my subject matter is, and the perspective through which I see and position both politically and emotionally. And perhaps all of these issues or interests were heightened by the separation I had to Mexico when I was in Providence because I think that when I stepped back from my community, my sense of affiliation or belonging to it only deepened, and that translated into the work I was making.
