About

Esther Gámez Rubio

was born in Hermosillo, Sonora, México and moved to Ensenada in 2004 where she has spent most of her professional life. Bachelor in Visual Arts with a diploma in printmaking.  Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in over 150 group shows in México, United States, Spain, and Qatar, as well as 11 solo shows: Muscular sadness (2009), Fuschia (2011), Anatomy of a new wound (2012), Extraordinary Consecrations (2013), Fantasma (2014), Pez Raro . Strange Fish (2015) Las Worry Dolls (2016) , Terpsichore (2018),  Turmalina (2019),  Skin and Entrails (2020), and Rituals for inhabiting a body (2022 - 2023). 

An active member of her local art scene, Esther often wears the hat of cultural promoter and curator for other emerging artists.  She is a founding member of  Yerbamala Taller, a studio and art collective focusing on holding spaces for women and non binary artists; CAP collective (Community and Public Art),  La Covacha (An independent cultural space from 2012 to 2016) and SIDIMPRO (Semana Internacional de Improvisación) an international improvisation festival currently in its eighth edition and part of the Red Estatal de Festivales.

Among the highlights of her career, you can find several prizes and selections from international organizations such as ADC/Building Bridges, Bice Bugatti, LA Art Show, Qatar Cultural Center, Paisanos (bi national art show in collaboration with the US Consulate), The US Consulate in Arizona, International Public Arts Festival IPAF, PECDA BC, and Bienal Plástica BC.  As of 2023, she has been inducted in the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte, a Fellowship for the arts in México.

Esther is a restless artist who has chosen to be open about the many paths and styles a creator has to walk in order to be able to survive and thrive.  Her works cover traditional media such as drawing, painting and printmaking, but spills into the experimental working with found materials, textiles and even tattoos.  For the last ten years, she has collaborated as a visualist with a number of sound and music artists, where she has learned to be an improviser using analog media.

Everything seems to fit within Esther's generous creative universe. The emergence and blooming of life, yes, but also its decay, the decomposition of organic materials that were once admired, loved, and vigorous human, animal, and vegetable bodies. The absurd culture of waste and obsolescence. The arbitrary invention and upholding of gender and inequities, along with the resistance and transformation that these conjure up. The desert, the sea. Flora, fauna. The complexity of human struggle, especially of women. Everything is revealed as palpably beautiful in the work of this reluctant shaman of the ordinary, a witch of the mundane, a witness and translator of the cycles of life, both permanent and transitory.