Margarita Cabrera Makes Collaborative Tapestries of Resilience

A synthetic garden of soft sculptures, crafted from olive-coloured fabric, blooms in Margarita Cabrera’s solo show ‘Secuelas: cuerpo, tierra, y mar’ (Repercussions: body, land, and water). Made to resemble indigenous cacti from the borderlands and arrayed in terra-cotta pots, works from her ‘Space in Between’ series (2010–ongoing) are constructed from second-hand uniforms formerly belonging to US border patrol agents. While buttons and logo patches remain fixed, fraying threads along the seams slip downward like vines.

Since 2010, the El Paso-based textile artist, who emigrated from Mexico as a child, has hosted embroidery workshops with migrant communities, teaching Otomí sewing techniques. Produced in these workshops, knotworks of multicoloured pictograms and words cover Cabrera’s sculptures, weaving transborder experiences into a rich tapestry of resilience.

While earlier pieces from this celebrated series focused on the US-Mexico border, the examples exhibited here – made between 2016 and 2024 – also incorporate the perspectives of individuals who have immigrated to Spain from Argentina, Chile, El Salvador and Pakistan. The plurality of voices is reflected in the range of handwork, from meticulous cross-stitching to roughly sewn outlines. Winding around the trunk of Arbol de Limon, in collaboration with M.F.D.F. (Argentina / España) (2024), from which dangle stuffed lemons adorned with images of planes and flags, is a Spanish text in tight needlework: quoting from Eduardo Galeano's book Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone (2009), it says that once, in a remote past, the world was a ‘map without borders, and our legs were the only passport required.’

I need to hover close to read across the stem of a neighbouring plant a lopsided annotation that calls for the ‘right to migrate’. On another fleshy leaf, I find a heavily worked illustration of a keffiyeh, raised in tufts of thread. Elsewhere, a figure is rendered behind bars, sewn beneath the official patch of the US border patrol. Embroidery isn’t a mere language of adornment; here, thick stitches evoke mending, strengthening and repair, adding additional structure to the fabric.

Wall-mounted collages from the series ‘Flujo de Extracciones’ (Flow of Extraction, 2022–ongoing) feature biomorphic cuts of uniform fabric, evoking the silhouettes of agave, saguaro and other desert plants. These works are painted with gouache and insect-derived cochineal dye, a staple of Aztec and Mayan cultures that became a valuable global commodity during Spanish colonization. Once used to colour the crimson coats of English soldiers and the capes of Catholic clergy, the natural pigment bleeds into the paper in soft pink blushes.

In Pepita Para El Loro Para Que Hable o Calle (A nugget for the parrot so that it speaks or stays quiet, 2024), nine life-size sculptures of endangered Amazon parrots native to the Texas-Mexico borderlands are crafted from the same green uniforms. Equipped with voice-activated mimicry devices, they spring to life on ‘hearing’ from gallery visitors, intermittently echoing their surroundings and playing pre-recorded statements about immigration and surveillance. As the parrots’ cacophonous cries warp and amplify our voices, they gesture to the ways in which official bureaucratic language around immigration abstracts, distorts and attempts to reduce the lived experiences of those who migrate.

If the exhibition underscores Cabrera’s ongoing commitment to exploring migration and displacement through allegorically and texturally rich sculpture, its urgency is heightened by the backdrop of anti-immigrant rhetoric in the US. At the show’s heart is Cabrera’s intimate collaboration with the vibrant individuals whom such rhetoric attempts to flatten, as they jointly transform patrol uniforms into supple, resilient desert plants that abound with personal stories. Instead of the sharp spines of the cacti, it is the careful work of the embroiderers’ needles that shapes the fabric, foregrounding human connection to counteract the divisive narratives of border politics.

Margarita Cabrera,‘Secuelas: cuerpo, tierra, y mar (Repercussions: body, land, and water)’ is on view at Jane Lombard Gallery, New York until 26 October

^{Main image: Margarita Cabrera, ‘Secuelas: cuerpo, tierra, y mar (Repercussions: body, land, and water)’, 2024, exhibition view. Courtesy: the artist and Jane Lombard Gallery; photograph: Arturo Sanchez}