about the artist
Demetrio Garcia Aguilar is son to Maestra Josefina Aguilar, one of those five daughters, whose work has been exhibited in Mexico and the US. Mr. Garcia took the red-clay art form he learned from his mother and transformed it into his own. As early as the age of 12 he started to make a name for himself winning pottery awards in Oaxaca and Mexico City . After a near-death experience at the age of 17, he developed a peculiar relationship with death, one of equal parts respect and equal parts mockery, which he has since implemented into his work. Combining his families' tradition with his own texture-driven innovations & discoveries, Demetrio creates fantastic handcrafted "muñecas & muñecos" with personal interpretations of religious, cultural & family themes. He searches for balance in his pieces, using a yin-yang of symbolic elements, often fusing life & death, good & evil, and questions of the underworld & the cosmos. His work is colored in rich yet ocher colors, detailed patiently and lovingly, while composing narratives between the old & the new. Demetrio and his work have traveled around different museums and universities in both Mexico and the United States, including the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago and the Museo Nacional de Culturas Populares in Mexico City.