Miguel Arzabe

Miguel Arzabe (b. 1975) is a Bolivian-American artist based in Oakland, California, working across painting, weaving, and video. His practice operates at the intersection of abstraction, material deconstruction, and textile traditions, producing a distinct visual language that bridges modernist painting with the structural and cultural logic of Andean weaving. Arzabe’s work begins with acts of collection and analysis—sourcing paper ephemera from exhibitions, reproductions of modernist artworks, and other cultural remnants—which he systematically deconstructs and reconstructs through intricate processes of cutting, layering, and weaving. This methodology functions as both a formal and conceptual framework, positioning his work as a form of reverse-engineering that interrogates authorship, value, and the circulation of images within contemporary culture. Drawing from the visual systems and techniques of Indigenous Andean textiles, Arzabe collapses distinctions between painting and weaving, creating hybrid works that exist simultaneously as image and object. His compositions retain the gestural immediacy of abstraction while embedding the physical structure of the weave, producing surfaces that oscillate between control and improvisation, fragmentation and cohesion. Positioned within a broader reconsideration of textile-based practices in contemporary art, Arzabe’s work contributes to critical dialogues around cultural inheritance, labor, and the translation of craft into the language of abstraction. By embedding Andean textile methodologies within a contemporary, globally informed practice, he expands the possibilities of painting while challenging entrenched hierarchies between fine art and craft. Arzabe’s work has been exhibited internationally at institutions including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the de Young Museum, the Berkeley Art Museum, and the CCA Wattis Institute, as well as in global exhibitions and festivals such as Hors Pistes at the Centre Pompidou and the Geumgang Nature Art Biennale. His work is held in numerous public collections, including the de Young Museum, the Oakland Museum of California, the Albuquerque Museum of Art, and the Harn Museum of Art.