Artist Statement

Ana Vergara is a Colombian-born American artist who fragments and distorts material culture of the domestic and urban landscapes she lives in. Influenced by architectural material and vernacular symbols, her work addresses how her immigration and forcefully rapid changes in her community impacts her sense of identity and memory. To describe this impact, Vergara heavily relies on rearranging and abstracting images and materials related to home or community as a way to materialize loss and changes in information.

The majority of her work comes from observations of her current environment, however, she sometimes takes inspiration from her former home, the city of Medellín. Reconstructing using memories becomes a way of reconnecting with her past in Colombia and making sense of the current life she has in Miami. By rearranging and abstracting iconography found in the architecture of Miami and Colombia, Vergara addresses the altering and misshaping of her identity as an immigrant and a yearning to reconnect.

While the mediums and explorations may change, Vergara commonly uses her environment as a material or tool for each work. Whether it is creating marks using signage in her community, drawing street signs and symbols, or coding computer programs which visually react to the environment’s input, she considers ‘place’ to be an essential material in her work.

Vergara’s work is interdisciplinary, however, she has taken an interest in sculpture and installation utilizing building materials in the past two years. There is a notable playfulness in using rigid and mass-produced materials seemingly void of any comfort and warmth to speak about ever-changing domestic lives in urban environments and the fluidity of memory. In working with the possibilities of second-hand bulk-production materials (primarily concrete, stone, and clay) and its modularity, the materials allow for repetition and slight changes within iterations of the works. With this, Vergara aims to memorialize aspects of her personal identity and environment as a way of honoring her constantly evolving home.