San Salvador Huixcolotla in the state of Puebla, in Mexico is considered to be the cradle of papel picado. In the summer of 2018 I went to Mexico searching for someone to teach me this beautiful tradition of cutting paper. I discovered Don Rene Mendoza in Huixcolotla.
During my residency at The Block Gallery, I explored my migrant journey through the USA and in collaboration with papel picado master Rene Mendoza, whom I had the privilege of meeting in 2018. Together, we highlighted certain emblematic elements found in the states where I have lived in the US, such as city seals and significant buildings/structures. Since my parents moved to the US as migrant farm workers, I intend to highlight the important crops my parents picked in the Central Valley, California; a testament to an immigrant farm worker's journey. In addition to crops, I incorporated city seals, found in each American city I have lived in and significant buildings/structures, such as the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California, and the Chrysler Building and Brooklyn Bridge in New York, among others; included were also texts from some of my favorite Latin American songs.
I have now guided various papel picado workshops in New York since my initial teachings by maestro Rene Mendoza from Huixcolotla, Puebla, Mexico.
Click sections for more information & samples of work, etc...
Caution: Collage and Papel Picado Ahead
An Exhibition of Works by Blanka Amezkua
October - November, 2022
Bronx Community College, Roscoe Brown Hall; Bronx, NY
Curated by Andrea M. Ortuño, PhD
In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, the Hall of Fame Gallery at Bronx Community College is pleased to present the exhibition, Caution: Collage and Papel Picado Ahead, featuring works by Bronx-based artist, Blanka Amezkua. For this exhibition, Blanka will present vibrant and colorful compositions of collage and cut paper inspired by the traditional Mexican art of papel picado.
CAUTION: Collage & Papel Picado Ahead is comprised of a selection of large scale papel picado and hand held collage works created since maestro Rene Mendoza from Hiuxcolotla, Puebla instilled in me the love for this traditional Mexican cutting paper technique. Thanks to his guidance and suggestions I am the only artist in New York City, I don't know of anyone else, able to share this technique in its entire splendor. But don Rene did not only share his vast knowledge with me, he also led me to his good friend Juan, the gifted metal smith who creates his chisels and in turn created mine. My 116 chisels were fashioned by the originality and strength of this talented man.
Allow me to share with you the love that I now have for this frail, ephemeral material, and what I have been able to create, thanks to the guidance of maestro don Rene Mendoza. It is one of my dreams to invite don Rene and his wife to New York, so you see and learn how the hands/creativity of a master papel picado artist dances throughout the surface of assembled tissue paper sheets, an graciously cut paper and reveal multiple fascinating and intricate designs.
US : WE / We Inter-Are
Together We Are One: Honoring Our Diversity, Celebrating Our Connection
2021 – present
Mitchel Houses, Mott Haven, South Bronx
A series of colorful emblematic images and symbols in stylized papel picado banners honoring and celebrating our cultural diversity and our interconnectedness. Installed in the exterior areas of the buildings.
ArtBridge, in partnership with NYC Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA), and New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), presented PRESENT POWER / FUTURE HOPES, a culminating group exhibition showcasing works from its City Artist Corps: Bridging the Divide installation series that aims to amplify the voices of New York City's 400,000 public housing residents. PRESENT POWER / FUTURE HOPES was a show that took place at The Clemente Soto Velez in the summer of 2022.
Smack Mellon - I come to this place.
June 15 - July 28, 2019
Smack Mellon is pleased to present I come to this place, a group exhibition that explores abstraction in art as a chain of histories that align, unpack, communicate, and translate connections. Twelve artists present their sensibilities through installations, multi-media work, paintings, and sound. Inherently, each artist nods at the Indigenous knowledge that is explored with an acute sense of line, rhythm, and place. Each work conscientiously considers foundational materials that uphold values of storytelling, nature, and spirituality...
Curated by: Eva Mayhabal Davis
Artists: Blanka Amezkua, Ricardo Cabret, Ana de la Cueva, Demian DinéYazhi´, Ginger Dunnill, Iván Gaete, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Dylan McLaughlin, Glendalys Medina, Ronny Quevedo, Mary A. Valverde, and Marela Zacarias
Smack Mellon is pleased to present I come to this place, a group exhibition that explores abstraction in art as a chain of histories that align, unpack, communicate, and translate connections. Twelve artists present their sensibilities through installations, multi-media work, paintings, and sound. Inherently, each artist nods at the Indigenous knowledge that is explored with an acute sense of line, rhythm, and place. Each work conscientiously considers foundational materials that uphold values of storytelling, nature, and spirituality.
In this exhibition, the gallery becomes a portal as each work presents an awareness of identity and displacement, synthesized with historical narratives, socio-politics, and environmental circumstances.
As such the title of the exhibition is an introduction. It is a phrase that artist Cannupa Hanska Luger employs as a greeting, as a statement, and as a placement. We are all invited to acknowledge how and where we have come to be, collectively capturing a moment so that we are no longer strangers and our presence today and yesterday are intertwined with tomorrow; we share this greeting to pursue a greater future together.
Taking inspiration from avant-garde modernists, Uruguayan artist Joaquin Torres-Garcia, who drew emphasis from "the spirit of synthesis," which he defined as the synchronization of the ancestral and the modern, threading interconnected sources, "this spirit allows the work to be seen in its totality as a single order, a unity." (The Arcadian Modern, 1930). Contemporary artists have been tasked with the construction of a deep visual language that weaves fragmented histories and present stories.
Future generations will look back on our visual vocabulary and see the links from further past to their present as embodied in form, composition, and materials translated as rituals and customs with human, spiritual, and natural origins. These works reveal the persistence of ever present familial and spiritual ties to see and experience forms that interconnect in everyday life.
We acknowledge the traditional, ancestral unceded territory of the Canarsie and Lenni Lenape peoples, among many other peoples, on which we are learning, creating and organizing today.
Press
I Come To This Place, Journey into an Exhibition, Whitehot Magazine
I come to this place, Wall Street International
The Block Gallery, AIM Residency - My Home Has Wings / Mi Casa Tiene Alas. April 25 - May 18, 2019
A collaboration with Mexican papel picado master Rene Mendoza
Residency: The Block Gallery, AIM Residency in Tribeca, NY;
The Bronx Museum of the Arts
Formally trained as a painter, Blanka Amezkua's multidisciplinary practice employs techniques often considered traditional or domestic – primarily embroidery and crochet – to address timely cultural, political, and gender issues. Her current body of work explores the expanded possibilities of papel picado the paper-cutting tradition of her native Mexico. Crafted from handmade confetti, tissue paper, and quilling papers, the pieces featured in My Home Has Wings / Mi Casa Tiene Alas merge Amezkua's training in painting with folk art traditions to create large-scale compositions that reproduce iconic landmarks, municipal seals, and agricultural goods that trace her passage across the U.S. – from California's Central Valley to Buffalo, New York – as the child of migrant farm workers. Developed in collaboration with Puebla-based artisan Rene Mendoza, the work highlighted in My Home Has Wings provides testament to the fortitude of America’s migrant communities.
The Block Gallery - Workshop
