Lina Puerta

Lina Puerta (born 1969) is a Colombian-American mixed media artist based in New York City.

She was born in New Jersey and grew up in Colombia.

Lina Puerta studied at Institute Lorenzode Medici in Florence, Italy, and earned her BA from Wells College with Honors in Studio Art in 1992.

Then she earned her master's degree in Art Education from Queens College in 1998.

Puerta's work covers several mediums, all of which are heavily influenced by materials and their metaphorical significance to the work.

She combines jewelry, fabric, paint, buttons, resin, wire, wood, etc. in her sculpture work, exploring the tension between nature and the human-made.

Both her sculpture work and her work on paper focus on themes of nature, man made structures, fragility, and the environment in relation to humanity.

Puerta's Botanico Series (2011–2014) is installation based and incorporates Polyurethane resin, wood, foam, paint, fiberfill, fabric, chains, rhinestones, beads, trims, and artificial plants and moss to create natural spaces emerging from a human-made object.

These works explore the relationship between nature and control, as these organic, plant-based works burst through their designated locations.

The Farmworker Series (2017) is one of Puerta's more recent projects.

She uses paper making techniques to create vibrant tapestries which bring attention to farm workers on crops in the American south.

Puerta weaves different materials in the tapestries, including lace, trims, sequined fabrics, velvet, handmade woven textile, pom-poms, fake fur, and gouache.

Each piece also includes [renderings] of the flowers and leaves from the crops represented in each image, as well as, birds and insects as pollinators to these crops.