Kandy G. Lopez is an artist who utilizes colorful mesh to create large-scale embroidered portraits representing historically marginalized communities. Drawing on her Afro-Caribbean heritage, she aims to generate dialogue about visibility and representation in her work. Though she has been experimenting with these materials for nearly a decade, she intensified her focus on this medium during her 2021 residency at The Hambidge Center. By vividly depicting life-size figures and layering threads, Lopez artfully intertwines themes of community and resilience, using her art to narrate comprehensive stories through both material and subject matter.
On large swaths of colorful mesh, Kandy G. Lopez embroiders large-scale portraits of people from historically marginalized communities. Her works are created out of the necessity to learn something new about her people and culture.
Visibility, presence, and representation are vital to the artist's work. In each composition, she centers vibrantly dressed, life-size figures so their gazes directly meet the viewer.
Lopez began working with mesh and fiber almost ten years ago, but she began to approach it more seriously as a major tenet of her practice in 2021 while an artist-in-residence.
I also love the metaphor in transparency, layers, and vulnerability, sharing that she sometimes still incorporates cityscapes painted onto the mesh.
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