Working across painting, textiles, and musical performance, Lisa Alvarado explores liminality—or in-betweenness—as a generative space where rhythm, movement, and history intertwine. Guided by what she calls “vibrational aesthetics,” the artist draws from bodily pulses and earthly cycles alike, creating multi-sensory works rich with visual and sonic resonance.
During her FWM residency, Alvarado experimented with sculptural fabric assemblage, screenprinting, and dyeing techniques to create two monumental hanging tapestries, each more than 19 by 10 feet. Composed of multi-colored bands that collide with stepped and curved shapes, these works echo both natural rock strata and the circular architecture of the gallery’s windows. Translucent mesh and tinted window gels channel shifting daylight into projected color, syncing the work with the rhythm of the day and season. Layered with kinetic sound, these pieces invite visitors into a meditative environment where light, pattern, and vibration converge.
Alvarado connects her research into land and notions of time to the present-day resurfacing of suppression that recalls her family’s experience in the 1930s and the Chicano civil rights movement of the 1960s. She describes these new large-scale works as talismans, evoking the powerful symbolism of the 1965 United Farm Workers flag, a sign of unity and empowerment. Her research also extends to geological time: visiting mineral collections in Philadelphia, she considers how cycles of change and resilience are recorded by the land.
In Talismans for a Theater of Resilience, Alvarado weaves together ancestral memory, natural cycles, and collective histories to create a space of resistance, community, and renewal.
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