Velasco is a Spanish-born artist who has been living and working in the US since 1991. Her interdisciplinary work consists of site-specific environments, urban interventions, sculptural objects, and temporary public art commissions. Her work deals with displacement, gender identity, vulnerability, and the structures of authority that govern our lives. She has shown her work nationally and internationally in university and private museums, and contemporary art venues such as The Soap Factory (Minneapolis, MN); the Contemporary Arts Forum (Santa Barbara, CA); the ARC gallery (Chicago, IL); the Spencer Museum of Art (Lawrence, KS); the Paula Cooper gallery and the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, both in New York City. Her work has been exhibited in Spain, Paraguay, Germany, Mexico, Argentina and Morocco and has been published in Art In America and Sculpture Magazine. She has conducted independent curatorial projects, discussion panels, and workshops nationally and abroad. She has received numerous awards and grants and has been a juror for the National Endowment for the Arts. Velasco received her B.F.A in Fine Arts from the Universidad Complutense of Madrid in 1989, and her M.F.A. in New Genre from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1993. She is a Professor of Visual Art at the University of Kansas and lives in Lawrence with her nine year old son, Alex, who loves to draw and make art.
https://www.mariavelascostudio.com
Velasco_Spaces of Conviviality_fabric, embroidery_2018_73 L x 26 W in/Centro Negra-AADK, Murcia, Spain. Participatory Art Project working with the community around concepts of migration, displacement, identity and integration. I created a ‘game’ which invited residents to share personal stories through conversation. These stories served to construct an “identity flag”, which was hand-embroidered by community members and unveiled as a public art event during Open Studios.