Laura De Valencia

I return to the ruana (Colombian poncho) as both image and structure. There is something about the ruana that I have been curious about: the principles of its weaving, its warp and weft, its geometry, and how each thread depends on the discipline of the perpendicular other to keep the fabric whole.

A textile can exist only when its forces remain in balance, when the tension is precise: if it is pulled too tightly, the fabric distorts; if it is too loose, the fabric comes apart. I think of this condition as a metaphor for order: no system can function through absolute rigidity or the complete absence of structure, but through a balance that must be continuously negotiated.

In this body of work, the ruana intersects with the image of the sambenito, a garment worn by those condemned for heresy during the Inquisition and later displayed in churches as a form of perpetual public humiliation. Both garments cover the body, but they also locate it socially: the sambenito marked the condemned, while in Colombia, los de ruana names those whose lives are most exposed to the consequences of political failure.

The drawings begin with a direct imprint. I place calligraphy paper over a textile I have woven in a Leclerc table loom and rub charcoal across its surface, extracting the structure of the weave. The resulting marks appear spontaneous, almost as traces of language, but they follow an underlying logic of warp and weft, repetition, crossing, and tension.

The result also evokes a ruana (Colombian poncho) as both image and structure. There is something about the ruana that I have been curious about: the principles of its weaving, its warp and weft, its geometry, and how each thread depends on the discipline of the perpendicular other to keep the fabric whole.

A textile can exist only when its forces remain in balance, when the tension is precise: if it is pulled too tightly, the fabric distorts; if it is too loose, the fabric comes apart. I think of this condition as a metaphor for order: no system can function through absolute rigidity or the complete absence of structure, but through a balance that must be continuously negotiated.

In this body of work, the ruana intersects with the image of the sambenito, a garment worn by those condemned for heresy during the Inquisition and later displayed in churches as a form of perpetual public humiliation. Both garments cover the body, but they also locate it socially: the sambenito marked the condemned, while in Colombia, los de ruana names those whose lives are most exposed to the consequences of political failure.

The work begins with Johanna Ortiz’s Tulum Top, a garment I have previously considered as a symbol of a recognizable and exportable Latin identity: an image capable of communicating origin, femininity, and belonging, but also of reducing a complex identity to easily identifiable visual codes.

I reinterpret the silhouette of the top through a textile I wove by hand on a loom. During the process, I incorporated metal gardening wire that crosses through and alters the textile structure. Broom fiber connects the piece to domestic labor, a recurring material in my practice, while the act of weaving refers to the patient construction of an identity that does not arrive fully formed at its destination.

I am interested in the possibility of recognizing the codes of a culture without being confined by them, and in seeing fashion as a structure of belonging similar to language or territory: one that allows us to recognize ourselves, present ourselves, and participate in particular codes, but can never fully contain the person who inhabits them.

Alluvion is the gradual process through which a river erodes, transports, and deposits sediment, slowly altering the shape of its banks. In the case of the Rio Grande, this physical movement takes on an additional dimension because the river also functions as the boundary between the United States and Mexico.

A border is a legal fiction: a line that does not materially exist in the landscape but acquires reality through agreements, laws, and collective recognition. Like private property, its constructed nature does not make it any less real or consequential. Yet against this demand for stability, the river introduces a material contradiction: the territory upon which the line is drawn remains in motion.

In the work, fragments of language are transferred, layered, and partially erased until they form a surface that resembles both text and territory. Words begin to lose their linguistic function and behave instead like sediment: accumulating, shifting, eroding, and leaving traces.

The work considers the tension between our need to establish legible and stable systems (language, borders, property, territory) and a physical reality that remains subject to change.

Language becomes soil; soil becomes language.

In this series, I graphically alter the name “Ross” to produce words such as loss, toss, and serve, linking them to different dimensions of my experience as an immigrant.

I manually print these words onto cleaning supplies and garments that recall those I used in the cleaning jobs I held when I arrived in Florida in 2007. With part of the money I earned, I would make occasional trips to Ross, where buying clothes represented more than a transaction: it was a small form of independence, choice, and participation in the culture I had just entered.

The store thus becomes a point of intersection between labor and consumption, necessity and desire. Clothing offers an immediate way to observe, learn, and try on the codes of a new environment without completely abandoning those one brings along.

The series explores how labor, consumption, and the act of dressing participate in the construction of belonging, and how ordinary objects can register both what is lost through migration and the new possibilities that emerge in the process.

I use the app MapMyWalk to trace my father’s lawnmower paths when he cuts grass at other people’s homes, a job that doesn’t require more interaction and that he chose to do when he emigrated to the United States at an age in which he felt incapable of learning English. I set MapMyWalk on the “wheelchair setting” so my dad’s mower movement could be detected by the app.

Through the act of recording his movement I attempt to validate my father’s labor as a form of language.

In addition, the works invites to think about perimeters as they are experienced by the immigrant. The stability of solid constructions in contrast with the spontaneity of human movement. The places that are allowed and the places we can only dream of. Demarcations, manicured lawns, perfectly planned neighborhoods as portraits of the American dream. I also think about how, even though my dad can walk, he can’t speak the language, which at his age may feel like a disability that he challenges through daily labor.

The series reflects on my experiences at 'El Consultorio,' a house adjacent to my grandparents’ dental practice in Barranquilla, Colombia. Often, after business hours, I would sneak into 'El Consultorio' to play secretary with their appointment books or try my hand as a little scientist, mixing alginate and mercury.

These works aim to capture the language barriers my grandparents faced at an older age during their immigration to the United States — challenges I also experienced when, at 24, I emigrated to live with them in Gainesville, FL. The series explores the dichotomy between the carefree moments of the past and the bodily pain associated with both dentistry and the complexities of our collective immigration journey.

The work is constructed from fragments of the Colombian Penal Code that were amended after the signing of the Peace Agreement on November 24, 2016.

The legal text is torn and transformed into an irregular, illegible object. The words remain, but their organization is altered.

The work examines the distance between the apparent precision of legal language and the complexity of the events that language attempts to organize. The law can be bent, reinterpreted, and transformed; the question is how far it can go without losing what gives it legitimacy.

Sambenito was a penitential garment used by condemned heretics during the Spanish Inquisition.

After heretics were killed for their sins, their sambenitos were hung up in the churches as mementos of disgrace to their families, and as the trophies of the Holy Inquisition.

Exhibition at the FSU museum of art, 2021.

I reproduce fragments from the books my grandfather used to study English as a kid, using traditional English samplers as a visual reference. The lessons I select teach the language through everyday instructions: how to sweep a room, make a bed, or maintain a home.

Traditionally, samplers were embroidered works used to practice and demonstrate needlework skills and often incorporated alphabets, domestic imagery, names, and moral or religious texts. In these works, I replace embroidery thread with dental floss, referring to my grandfather’s profession as a dentist before immigrating to the United States later in life. The white thread reproduces the words and images while simultaneously making them difficult to read, turning language into something that must be deciphered.

The series begins with a coincidence that interests me: learning a new language through the vocabulary of domestic labor. From there, I explore the relationship between language, labor, and belonging, and the ways ordinary acts of cleaning, maintaining, and caring for a space can also participate in constructing a home within a new culture.

This drawing is informed by my work as a Spanish translator in a public elementary school in Tallahassee, FL, where I assist newly arrived immigrant children who have no knowledge of the English language to communicate with their teachers and understand their lessons.

To create this piece, I re-draw a children's notebook with lines that are generated by spectrogram interpretations of the sounds that immigrants hear during a typical school day. These lines form a visual representation of the language barriers that these children face, which end up resembling the US-Mexico border that many of them once crossed. The piece highlights how this border continues to manifest in different forms, including language barriers.

The Language of Silence (Margenes)
Drawing on wood
10x10”
2023

This series confronts our relationship to the idea of “Latinidad” which is in most cases limited to the ornamental and circumscribed to certain spaces such as the authentic restaurant or the home decor section at department stores.

The material for these pieces was sourced from spoonflower.com, a website that sells custom printed fabric. Colorful patterns are offered by Spoonflower.com under the “worldly” category and they are uploaded by designers in the United States, whom feel inspired by “warm and colorful” Latin prints. I screenshot the interface of spoonflower.com showing the appropriated designs and re-upload them as a new design of my authorship, for spoonflower.com to print.

In other instances, I screenshot fragments of the labels (colorful! Party! Mexican!) used by designers to sell the prints and I create collages with the colorful patterns they offer, and re-upload them as a new design of my own for spoonflower.com to print.

I compare the structured representation of geographical features through rigid grids and geometry with the free-flowing, spontaneous essence of human movement, which I express using organic, gestural lines.

When I transform sketches into paintings, I explore the idea of loss, much like how subtle nuances can disappear when speaking in a foreign language.

Mixed media on canvas. 24x36”. 2023

I make a poncho out of handwoven Colombian fabric and paint red dots representing migrant bodies found in the US-Mexico border, based on data provided by the Migrant Death Mapping put together by the organization Humane Borders in partnership with the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office.

The poncho is washed by migrants hands until the red ink comes off with water, not without leaving an indelible mark on the fiber.

Mixed media
34x20”
2020

I draw the border line on a cotton t-shirt. The line fades with the sweat produced by my body after dancing for 1.5 hours.

The work connects domestic labor to the course of the Rio Grande, the river boundary between the United States and Mexico. Natural broom fiber refers to acts of cleaning, care, and maintenance, while the sewn red line simultaneously evokes the course of the river, a suture, and a border.

The work brings labor, territory, and order into relation, considering how ordinary gestures such as cleaning, sewing, and maintaining also participate in the construction of home and in the definition of its boundaries.

Sambenito was a penitential garment used by condemned heretics during the Spanish Inquisition.

After heretics were killed for their sins, their sambenitos were hung up in the churches as mementos of disgrace to their families, and as the trophies of the Holy Inquisition.