Eduardo Sarabia: Ceiba Sagrada

Los Angeles-born, Mexico-based Eduardo Sarabia has become one of the better-known artistic voices of his generation for using materials and imagery associated with street culture, craft, and folk history to draw connections between his personal story and the narrative of Mexico, the land of his chosen home and ancestral heritage. Often using spray paint, ceramic, and textiles and colorful flora, fauna, and symbols, he creates bold artworks that prompt questions about definitions of taste and the consequences of economic forces, especially on long-held traditions and the natural world.

Ceiba Sagrada presents, for the first time, artworks by Eduardo Sarabia recently acquired by the Museum in an installation designed and realized by the artist. In a gallery overlooking the Gardens, Sarabia paints a mural of sprawling green vines as a lush backdrop for an acrylic and ink drawing of a sacred ceiba tree and a flock of fourteen colorful, sculptural birds. Though the birds are all endangered species, here the ceramic versions are thriving amongst the robust trunk and limbs of a tree revered in tropical parts of the Americas for straddling between the underworld, humans, and the heavens.