Laura Anderson Barbata

Born in Mexico City, Laura Anderson Barbata is a Mexican transdisciplinary artist currently based in New York and Mexico City. Since 1992 has initiated long-term projects and collaborations in the Venezuelan Amazon, Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, Norway, and the United States that address social justice and the environment. Her work often combines performance, procession, dance, music, textile arts, costuming, papermaking, zines and protest. Among them is her ongoing project La Extraordinaria Historia de Julia Pastrana, begun in 2005, which resulted in the removal of Pastrana’s body from the Schreiner Collection in Oslo and its successful repatriation and burial in Sinaloa, Mexico, Pastrana’s birth state. Supported by the National Fund for Culture and Arts, FONCA, Mexico (2014-2017). Since 2007 she has worked with the Brooklyn Jumbies and have presented their interventions in numerous cities and museums nationally and internationally.

Her work is in various private and public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, MoMA, New York; el Museo de Arte Moderno, México D.F.; Landesbank Baden-Württemberg Gallery, Stuttgart; Fundación Cisneros; Museo Carrillo Gil, México; and Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary.

Anderson Barbata has been Miembro del Sistema Nacional de Creadores, FONCA, México (1999-2017) and professor at the Escuela Nacional de Escultura, Pintura y Grabado La Esmeralda of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (2010-2015).

Recipient of the Anonymous Was a Woman 2016 Award and the Mario Trujillo García 2017 Award for Defense of Human Rights, Instituto de Administración Pública de Tabasco,  A. C. (IAP Tabasco) Mexico;  Honorary Fellow of LACIS (the Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian Studies Program), University of Wisconsin, Madison; and a fellow of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary TBA21 The Current program.  In 2019 she was awarded The Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency. She is currently on the Board of Directors of the College Art Association where she also serves as VP for Diversity and Inclusion.