EFA STUDIO PROGRAM: Member Artists
Laura Anderson Barbata
Lunchtime Studio visit with Laura Anderson Barbata
My practice merges sculpture, textiles, drawing, video, performance, installation, and socially engaged methodologies rooted in reciprocity and knowledge exchange. I create participatory, interdisciplinary works that explore cultural continuity, environmental justice, and human rights. Collaboration is central to my approach—not only as method, but as ethic—inviting co-creation with dancers, artisans, and community members. Many works take the form of processions or public actions, while others are sculptural installations or intimate publications. From handmade books to large-scale interventions, I aim to generate spaces for dialogue, visibility, and transformation across disciplines, geographies, and systems of knowledge.
My work addresses cultural resilience, environmental degradation, and social inequity. Since 1992, I have developed long-term projects across the Americas and Europe, often in collaboration with stilt dancers, traditional makers, and local communities. These projects unfold in both public spaces and institutional settings—reframing museums, streets, and communal gathering places as platforms for exchange and connection. Rooted in values of reciprocity and community leadership, these works draw on celebratory processions and place-based knowledge. By combining lived experience with material inquiry, I position art as a site of agency and dialogue.
I am driven by a belief in art’s capacity to foster empathy, disrupt systems of oppression, and catalyze awareness. Since the beginning of my career, I have explored the role of the artist as facilitator and witness—connecting relationships, histories, and practices that are often overlooked. I am inspired by the power of collaboration and the transmission of intergenerational knowledge. My work is animated by questions of belonging, sustainability, and justice. Through co-authorship, shared labor, and poetic intervention, I aim to build bridges across cultures and disciplines—to promote mutual respect and invite us to imagine, collectively build, and celebrate a more inclusive and equitable future.
