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Bio

(b. 1950, San Antonio, Texas)

Kathy Vargas is an artist/photographer from San Antonio, Texas. Her hand-coloured, multiple-exposure photographs have become her signature, although she also has roots in rock-and-roll photography. Her imagery is informed both by her faith and her ancestral stories and histories. 

Vargas received her MFA from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 1984.  She has had solo exhibits in Rome, Mexico City, and Buenos Aires, as well as retrospectives at the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio and Universität Erlangen in Germany.  Two major travelling exhibits that featured Varga’s works include Hospice: A Photographic Inquiry at the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C. (1996), and Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation (1990-1993), are credited with raising the profiles of Chicano/a art nationally and internationally. Her work is in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Toledo Museum of Art, the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and others.  Named the 2005 Texas Two-Dimensional Artist of the Year by the Texas Commission on the Arts, she also received a Light Work Residency in 1993 and an Artpace Residency in 1997.  Her papers are housed at the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art.  She is currently a professor of Art/Photography at the University of the Incarnate Word. 

Photo by Cameron Brennan.

Selected Works | Otras obras destacadas

1995 Kathy Vargas
Mixed media with hand-coloured gelatin silver print, with text | Técnica mixta con impresión en gelatina de plata pintada a mano, con texto
50.8 x 40.6 cm (20 x 16 in)
Collection of Zoë A. Díaz | Colección de Zoë A. Díaz
Photo courtesy of the artist | Imagen cortesía del artista
1995 Kathy Vargas
Mixed media with hand-coloured gelatin silver print, with text | Técnica mixta con impresión en gelatina de plata pintada a mano, con texto
50.8 x 40.6 cm (20 x 16 in)
Collection of Zoë A. Díaz | Colección de Zoë A. Díaz
Photo courtesy of the artist | Imagen cortesía del artista
1995 Kathy Vargas
Mixed media with hand-coloured gelatin silver print, with text | Técnica mixta con impresión en gelatina de plata pintada a mano, con texto
50.8 x 40.6 cm (20 x 16 in)
Collection of Zoë A. Díaz | Colección de Zoë A. Díaz
Photo courtesy of the artist | Imagen cortesía del artista
1995 Kathy Vargas
Mixed media with hand-coloured gelatin silver print, with text | Técnica mixta con impresión en gelatina de plata pintada a mano, con texto
50.8 x 40.6 cm (20 x 16 in)
Collection of Zoë A. Díaz | Colección de Zoë A. Díaz
Photo courtesy of the artist | Imagen cortesía del artista
1995 Kathy Vargas
Mixed media with hand-coloured gelatin silver print, with text | Técnica mixta con impresión en gelatina de plata pintada a mano, con texto
50.8 x 40.6 cm (20 x 16 in)
Collection of Zoë A. Díaz | Colección de Zoë A. Díaz
Photo courtesy of the artist | Imagen cortesía del artista
1995 Kathy Vargas
Mixed media with hand-coloured gelatin silver print, with text | Técnica mixta con impresión en gelatina de plata pintada a mano, con texto
50.8 x 40.6 cm (20 x 16 in)
Collection of Zoë A. Díaz | Colección de Zoë A. Díaz
Photo courtesy of the artist | Imagen cortesía del artista

TASTE, READ, WATCH + LISTEN | SABOREA, LEE, MIRA + ESCUCHA

We asked the artist to share their favourite things | Le pedimos a cada artista que comparta sus cosas favoritas.

THERE'S MORE ABOUT Kathy! |
THERE'S MORE ABOUT Kathy!
| ¡HAY MÁS DE Kathy!
¡HAY MÁS DE Kathy!