Michelle Cortez Gonzales is a Fort Worth based multidisciplinary artist who creates sewn-textile paintings, and installations. She earned her BFA in painting from the University of Texas at Arlington, and her MA and MFA in painting from the University of Dallas. Her work has been featured in Maake Magazine and Arts and Culture Texas. She has exhibited in the Anya Tish Gallery (Houston, TX), Talley Dunn Gallery, Presa House Gallery (San Antonio, TX), Untitled Art Fair (Miami, FL), and Dallas Art Fair (Dallas, TX). Cortez Gonzales was showcased in Visit Fort Worth’s 2021 series of “Women Worth Meeting”, and awarded residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, VT (2024), Cuttyhunk Artist Residency, MA (2021), and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art as a 2021 Community Artist. She was a recipient of the 2023 National Endowment for the Arts: Challenge America Grant from the Dallas District Colleges. In addition to her studio practice, Cortez Gonzales is a public art project manager with Arts Fort Worth and adjunct professor with Tarrant County College.

Statement

My work examines memory, cultural loss, and the complexity of identity. I create within the space between two and three dimensions, fine art and craft, loss and reclamation, past and present. In this crucial midpoint lies the tension of opposing ideas, a liminal state of not fully belonging to one thing or another, where memory exists as fragmented and often contradictory. I combine painting, collage, and found materials with embroidery, sewing and hand-building to interrogate layered and unstable narratives shaped by gender roles, familial relationships, religion, and assimilation. I infuse each piece with tenderness toward my ancestors, and my present self. Through this process, material becomes memory and making becomes healing.