Porfirio Gutiérrez

Porfirio Gutierrez is a California-based Zapotec textile artist and natural dyer, born and raised in the richly historic Zapotec textile community of Teotitlán del Valle in Oaxaca, Mexico. He grew up immersed in color and surrounded by the wildness of Oaxaca's mountains, and by the knowledge of plants for healing and for color. His life’s work has been revitalizing and preserving traditional Zapotec natural dye techniques with a focus on reinterpreting traditional textiles and materials to reflect his distinct creative vision.

Working in both Ventura, California, and Oaxaca, Gutíerrez’s art practice maintains his ancestor’s spiritual belief in nature as a living being, sacred and divine. His grounding in Zapotec traditional knowledge manifests in his textiles, reinterpreting the traditional weaving language, subverting and re-imagining the symbols and forms, morphing his textile designs toward the fractal forms and spaces of architecture and the movement he sees in cities and urban environments.

Gutíerrez is a truly American artist, moving freely across the imposed borders between his two countries, as his ancestors and many other Indigenous peoples have done for thousands of years. His designs draw deeply on his experiences of two cultures, moving between the traditional and the modern, but always reliant on the deep knowledge and spiritual dimensions of his work. Gutíerrez’s practice is an offering to the land and celebrates the people who now call this land home.

The story of his art has been told in The New York Times, PBS, and the BBC World Service, London. Gutíerrez has been featured in Vogue Magazine and the Smithsonian’s American Indian Magazine. In 2015, he received the Smithsonian Institution’s Artist in Leadership fellowship award. His work is in the collection of the Museo Nacional de Culturas Populares, Fomento Cultural Banamex, and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American Indian. A selection of Gutiérrez dye materials was also documented and added to Harvard Art Museums’ Forbes Pigment Collection, the world-renowned archive of artist materials.

The Mexican weaver reimagining an ancient Zapotec art form
The Cultural Frontline, BBC
London, UK

When Artists and Scientists Team Up
The Getty Foundation
Los Angeles, California

5 ways to fix fashion’s biggest pollution problem
Vogue Australia

Vivid Colors, Naturally
New York Times

Saving an Ancient Craft:
Porfirio Gutiérrez Returns Home
American Indian, Magazine of Smithsonian’s
National Museum of the American Indian

A Colorful Tradition
Index, Harvard University

Ancient Weaving
PBS TV (video)

The Fabric of your Life
Selvedge, London

Tejedor de Sueños
Univision TV (video)

No Quería Ser un Artesano Más
El Universal (newspaper article)

The Weaver from the Place of God
Flint Magazine (video on Flint website)

Local Hero
Hole & Corner, London

Traditional Zapotec Dyes Proctice
Harvard Art Museums, Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Artist Talk
Fowler Museum, UCLA
Los Angeles, California

The Art of Hand Made
Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology
University of California, Berkeley

Innovation Within Traditional Folk Art
De Young Museum
San Francisco, California

The Preservation of Zapotec Natural Dyeing Tradition
International Folk Art Market
Santa Fe, New Mexico

Focus on the Masters Artist Spotlight:
A Conversation with Porfirio Gutiérrez
Lecture, oral history and video documentation of Porfirio's life work
Ventura, California

Traditional Techniques: Preservation in the Modern World
Mingei International Museum
San Diego, California

Bring it Home
Artists Reconnecting Cultural Heritage with Community
Panel discussion with artists in the National Museum of the American Indian’s Artist Leadership Program
Washington, DC

Artist

Selected Exhibitions

Selected Press

Museum Collections

Honors, Awards & Distinctions

Invited Lectures

Selected Art Fairs