Artist
Mateo Gutiérrez is a contemporary artist who makes hand-embroidered artworks that bring into question the underlying culture of violence endemic to American life both personally, politically and historically. Mateo moved to the U.S. at the age of sixteen, and has struggled with his conflicted relationship to the U.S. ever since. He presents both a sociopolitical and a deeply personal reflection on what it means to be American. He challenges the viewer with both a haunting and empathetic view of the traumatic effects of the so-called “American way of life” and also what it means to be an outsider as both foreign born and Latino. He cites his complex experience with the United States as central to his understanding of American cultural practices that are defined by racial and socioeconomic hierarchies engendering violence and xenophobia.
Mateo has exhibited nationally in galleries in Los Angeles, New York and Texas, including multiple museum exhibitions: the Austin Museum of Art, MexicArte Museum and a solo exhibition at the Brownsville Museum of Fine Art in 2023. Mateo is a featured artists in the 2024-2025 Texas Biennial, the longest running state biennial in the US. Mateo has been featured in New American Painters, Hyperallergic, the Austin American Statesman, The Hartford Courant, Glasstire and other notable journals. Mateo was a resident in the Bronx Art Space Governors Island Residency on Governors Island New York City in 2021, and will be starting a residency in Brooklyn NY at the Textile Art Center in the Fall off 2025. Mateo gave a TEDx talk in 2024 about his series “And I Feel Fine / Y Me Siento Bien”. Mateo has a BA in philosophy from the University of California at Berkeley and his MFA in studio painting from the University of Texas at Austin.