Anaid Garcia

Who will remember our stories, and who gets to tell them? This has been an ongoing question in Anaid’s practice. With the recent loss of their grandmother, this question has grown louder in their work, as they dissect and face the realities of being left with the immaterial matter of memory. Their thesis exhibition, Tierra Que Nos Vio Nacer, guides them toward understanding their grandmothers’ and elders’ leyendas and dichos (legends and sayings). Deshilado embroidery techniques have been an essential part of their practice, holding the memory of craft that has resided in Anaid’s lineage for generations, dating back to their great-grandmother Jovita. Using deshilado as a medium, Anaid actively engages with their ancestors as collaborators. Making a deshilado is a ritual of care for Anaid, embodying generational knowledge of threadwork that has been an act of healing within their matriarchal lineage. In Tierra Que Nos Vio Nacer, Anaid uses deshilado and oil paint to reimagine their family archive in dynamic ways that resemble the leyendas and dichos passed down through generations, with the foundational understanding that memory is sometimes all we have to remember someone or a place.

Anaid Garcia (b. 2000, Los Angeles) is a Mexican-American multidisciplinary artist. Garcia combines oil painting with deshilado techniques to explore family archives, memory, and cultural heritage. Dethreading and restitching the painting surface become forms of muscle memory passed down through their grandmother’s and great-grandmother’s threadwork. Through their work, Garcia honors the impermanence of the physical form by preserving oral histories to ensuring these cultural memories endure across generations.