Maria De Los Angeles: Finding Community Through Identity Garments

Born in Mexico, raised in California, and currently based in New York City and New Jersey, Maria de Los Angeles explores migration, belonging, and identity through her art.

This August, in partnership with SVMoA, Maria is hosting teen, family and community workshops at SVMoA’s Hailey Classroom and the Hunger Coalition in preparation for a group exhibition at SVMoA summer 2025. She will also be speaking at The Museum about her work.

We sat down with Maria to discuss her art and artistic collaboration with our community.

Can you tell us a little bit about the project you are working on that you will be showing in the Summer of 2025 at SVMoA.

I will exhibit a few paintings, watercolors, and a brand-new identity garment made with components created by community members during the upcoming workshops at SVMoA in August. The dress is in progress, and I started it during our last visit to Sun Valley this past winter.

The dress that I am making is part of what I call identity garments, they are mixed media and three-dimensional. They include painting, printmaking, collage with hand painted elements as well as embroidery. They are wearable and the one I am currently working on is quite large, almost seven feet. Most of the components include upcycled fabrics and fragments I have found. This is the first time people will be adding to the garment and the project.

Most of my work has some aspect of community involvement. However, this is the first time people are making something embedded into my work.

You will be hosting three different community and teen workshops; can you tell us what you are planning for the workshops?

The dress workshops will result in the creation of patches to be added to my final sculpture. The Identity Upcycled Hoodie workshop, in collaboration with Ryan Bonilla, will allow participants to customize a clothing item and take it home with them. I invite the Sun Valley Museum's community to visit the website to see which they want to attend. 

How do fabric arts and clothing figure into your work? How did you get into clothing as sculpture?

I'm inspired by traditions that incorporate the garment and clothing as a way of projecting identity. I grew up seeing my mom create embroideries and other textile pieces, which was influential to me. My first step into textiles was collage which quickly grew into 3D forms and logically into wearables.

After completing my graduate school studies at Yale in painting and printmaking, I began experimenting with what I call identity garments which were more performative and playful, and enabled me to expand the two-dimensional work of painting and printmaking into three dimensions.

You are traveling here to Idaho with your partner Ryan Bonilla and you will be co-presenting a few workshops together, specifically the Upcycled Hoodies Workshop for Teens. How do you collaborate and work together?

Ryan Bonilla and I travel all over the USA, exhibiting together and collaborating with various institutions. We each make our own work and exhibit together sometimes. Ryan is primarily a photographer, and I'm a painter.

He collaborates with me by capturing incredible images of me wearing my sculptures. Ryan also captures the places and people we see during our trips. We are very excited about both our upcoming exhibitions at the Sun Valley Museum of Art next year. 

Is there anything else you would like to share before your community workshops?

I heard there are a lot of quilters in the area. I would like to let the quilters know they are invited!