Cristina Velásquez
Somos Animales Poéticos
Aug 7 - 30 , 2025
Who I am: remains a mystery, even to myself—an incomplete archive, full of gaps, reconstructions, and possibilities, continuously rewritten. My subjectivity is a weaving of what I remember, what I have forgotten, what has been imposed on me, and what I choose to be. The definition of who I am moves freely and reconfigures itself at every moment; it is woven from the collective, and exists in constant negotiation—between past and present, self and other, body and territory. The categories by which I define myself are not natural or fixed, but historical and modifiable.
My work transits between photographic genres and incorporates elements of weaving, collage, and literature. I do not separate reality from fiction; rather, I intertwine them, opening space for speculation and desire. Beyond questioning the past and present, I imagine possible futures—new ways of inhabiting images, languages, and memory. I am interested in how experience is preserved, erased, inscribed, and reimagined.
I use photography as a practice of listening and translation—a continuous re-elaboration of languages that embody rupture and mend: hybrid, migratory, mestizo. My work can be seen as a constellation of fragments woven together, originating from and returning to the body as a space of inscription and resistance.
In-Person Artist Talk
Sat, Aug 9 at 3:30 PM
Cristina Velásquez (b.1985, Colombian, she/her) is an artist and publisher based between Austin and Bogotá. She received an MFA from the Bard College–International Center of Photography program in New York City in 2017. Velásquez’s work has been exhibited at the Musée de l’Elysée, the ICP Museum, ArtBo, MoMA PS1, the Houston Center for Photography, among others, and is held in both private and public collections.
Her photobooks have been acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Getty Research Institute, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim Museum, ICP, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and George Washington University, among others.
Recent awards and residencies include the Yaddo Residency (2025), the Dust Collective Prize (2025), Latitude AIR (2023), ReGeneration4 at the Musée de l’Elysée (2020), Light Work (2019), the Carol Crow Fellowship (2019), and the Kris Graves Projects LOST II Book Prize (2019).
Velásquez is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of New Poetics Publishing, an independent press that collaborates with emerging artists on contemporary and experimental approaches to photography in the book form. She is also the art director at Paisajes Coloniales. Velásquez is represented by Assembly Gallery.