Monday, November 10, 6PM
Logan Center for the Arts, Penthouse Room 901
"From Objects to Landscape, and Other Stories"
Join us at the Logan Center for the Arts for an artist talk with internationally renowned Mexican artist Magali Lara followed by a conversation with art historian Maggie Borowitz, hosted by the Open Practice Committee in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago.
Born in Mexico City, Magali Lara has been exhibiting her work internationally for almost 50 years. Experimenting across artistic mediums, collaborating with interdisciplinary makers, and bringing a nuanced feminist approach to her practice, she has been recognized as one of the most important artists of her generation. In this lecture, Lara will discuss five central themes–grid, text, landscape, gesture and monster– all of which have remained present in her practice for over five decades. Beginning with her interest in grids for their negative space and capabilities to visually frame stories of the everyday, to her obsession with gardens and images of trees as links between the underground and the sky, to monsters as ghosts of what we choose to ignore, Lara will take us through various projects that illustrate these ideas across various scales and presentation formats. For Lara, art is an extraordinary way to read our times, from the personal to the political, from the outside to the inside.
Following the presentation, Lara will be joined by Maggie Borowitz, who is currently at work on a book manuscript entitled Magali Lara: Feminist Artistic Tactics and the Mexican 1980s, for an intimate conversation discussing these central themes.
Presented in partnership with the Lit & Luz Festival and the University of Chicago’s Open Practice Committee in the Department of Visual Arts, and the Department of Art History
Magali Lara resides in Cuernavaca, Morelos, where she teaches painting at the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos. She studied Visual Arts at ENAP and has been a member of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte since 1994. In 2023, Lara was appointed as a full member of the Academia de Artes, CONACULTA, INBAL, MX. Recognized in 2022 for 20 years of service at UAEM, she received a grant from the Sistema Nacional de Creadores for 2021-23 and was awarded the Medal of Bellas Artes, Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura, INBAL, MX. 2024.
Lara’s work evidences a deep relationship between literature and visual arts; as she says, “the idea of visual poetry is central for most of my work.” Her practice encompasses painting, drawing, ceramics, tapestry, and video animation, often exploring the interplay between literature and visual art. Notable exhibitions include “Magali Lara. Cinco décadas en espiral” en el MUAC, CDMX (2025). "Magali Lara: Interior Landscapes" at The Institute of Fine Arts, New York University and ISLAA Duke House Exhibition, New York, USA (2024); and "TRÓPICO FANTASMÁTICO: BORRAMIENTOS" at La Tallera, Cuernavaca, Morelos, MX (2023). Critic Jose Luis Barrios characterizes her work as a blend of hospitality and hostility, evolving from early depictions of domestic items to provocative floral paintings.
Maggie Borowitz is an art historian whose research focuses on the relationship between art and politics in late-twentieth-century Latin America with special emphasis on feminist practices in Mexico. She is an Assistant Teaching Professor at Penn State where she teaches classes on the history of Latin American art and architecture from the pre-colonial period to the present. She is at work on a book manuscript entitled Magali Lara: Feminist Artistic Tactics and the Mexican 1980s, which investigates the political potency of expressions of female subjectivity through a study of the art of Magali Lara. Her writing has been published in Art Journal and ARTMargins and, most recently, she contributed to an exhibition catalogue for the Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo’s 2025 retrospective of Magali Lara’s work.