Jami Porter Lara is a conceptual artist who is interested in the ways humans use ideas about what is “natural” to naturalize human political constructs. Through a broad range of formal approaches such as sculpture, print-making, and sign-making, as well as sewing and embroidery, Porter Lara explores the ways in which the fictions of identity create lived reality. Her work is in public and private collections internationally, and has been featured in Art 21 Magazine, American Craft, Hyperallergic, and on PBS. In 2017, Artsy named her one of the artists shaping the future of ceramics. Exhibitions include the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe, NM; and Craft Contemporary in Los Angeles, CA. She is represented by Gerald Peters in Santa Fe and Simon Breitbard Fine Arts in San Francisco.
While at MacDowell, Jami performed research for a new body of work that interrogates the roles of mothering and the domestic sphere in the reproduction of white dominance. She also completed the design for a series of sculptures that are permanently installed at the U.S. Consulate General in Matamoros, Mexico. Early works from the series, which contemplates the porous nature of borders as well as the nature of art and garbage, were featured in her 2017 solo exhibition, “Border Crossing,” at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.
