Christina Barrera was born in South Florida to Colombian immigrant parents and is now a a multi-disciplinary artist and educator based in New York City. Her mother was a public school art teacher and her father is a disappointed intellectual/failed union organizer who became many kinds of laborer after immigrating; chef, waitstaff, Denny’s Manager, t-shirt screen-printer, and now carpenter. Barrera began professionalized training as an artist very early at public arts schools starting at eleven years old and is still dismantling and building on that education. Because of those resources Barrera attended the Maryland Institute College of Art on a full scholarship and is an ardent supporter of student debt cancellation. She lived in Baltimore for three more years after graduating, working in multiple museums, as a muralist, an educator, and an A/V technician for lectures and events. In 2014 she moved to New York City to support her partner through their MFA degree and worked sixty to seventy hour weeks as an Admissions Counselor for a private art university for four years. She quit to pursue her MFA at Hunter College.
Barrera has exhibited with Swivel Gallery, The National Academy of Design, Galeria del Barrio, Hauser & Wirth, Lauren Powell Projects, the NARS Foundation, P.A.D. Gallery, Hunter East Harlem Gallery, and Old Stone House in New York City; Scott Charmin Gallery in Houston, TX; School 33 Art Center and Current Space in Baltimore, MD; and her work is in the collection of the Nepalese Academy of Fine Arts in Kathmandu, Nepal. Barrera is a Jacques and Natasha Gelman Trust Scholar, a Stanton Grant recipient, winner of a Robert Blackburn Printmaking Award, and has received funding and support from the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Studio Arts Center International, the AICAD New York Studio Program, and the National Association of Women Artists, among others.
Barrera is based out of a studio she built out with a group of peers and is a College Assistant at the Hunter College Department of Art and Art History.
christinabarre[at]gmail[dot]com
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