Tortilla Baby
Rica Maestas

Tortilla Baby ruminates on birth and belonging, as well as the fraught yet intimate relationship between parents and children. How do we become a part of the rich, complicated, and varied cultural landscape here in New Mexico? Through our heritage, our experiences, our deliberate choices, or is it something else entirely? This piece explores these questions in a tenderly absurd process of viviparity, where the artist will be built in to an horno-like structure in order to be born (or perhaps escape).

Rica Maestas is a burqueña artist, author, educator, and social practitioner from Albuquerque. In her creative practice, she is interested in vulnerability, whimsical connections, and finding the ‘plenty’ in ‘not enough.’ She has received numerous grants for her creative work, curated independent, experimental exhibitions as well as institutional projects, published written ruminations in diverse forums, and exhibited visual art and performance pieces nationwide. Maestas holds an MA from Brown in Public Humanities and a BA from USC in narrative studies/cognitive science/design. In addition to pursuing her own creative art practice, Maestas coordinates digital communications & membership at SITE Santa Fe, and programs at Vital Spaces.

​

From the artist: "I make little treasures, gifts of myself offered sweetly and in earnest. With aspirations of intimacy, I invite you to be my guests in surreal and often emotionally demanding spaces, whether physically, through socially engaged projects and performances, or intuitively, through paintings, photos, and assemblage. Inspired by the desert and the loneliness of childhood, my artworks are an exercise in communicating the intricacies of feeling small and vulnerable, and living entirely in the magic of your imagination."