With winter’s muted tones settled over Michigan, “Spaces We Inhabit” will bring warmth and color to Hope College’s De Pree Art Gallery when the exhibition opens on Thursday, Jan. 9, transforming the space into a dialogue between the season’s quiet stillness and the lively interlaced forms of Mexican artist Laura Villarreal. The exhibition will continue through Wednesday, Feb. 12.
Villarreal’s site-specific installation, woven from thread, reimagines the gallery’s architecture, filling it with layers of movement, texture and memories. The artworks will stand in stark contrast to the bare, dormant landscape outside, inviting viewers to step into a space where the concept of home is both familiar and newly animated by her vision.
Villarreal will deliver an artist talk on Thursday, Jan. 9, at 6 p.m., with an opening reception following from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. The public is invited to the exhibition, artist talk and opening reception. Admission to each is free.
In addition to the public events, there will be two workshops for Hope College students. The exhibition’s curator, Sofia Sánchez Borboa, will present a curator’s workshop on Friday, Jan. 10, from noon to 2:30 p.m. in room 131 of the De Pree Art Center and Gallery, and Villarreal will lead a loom-weaving workshop on Saturday, Jan. 11, from noon to 4 p.m. in the sculpture studio of the De Pree Art Center and Gallery. The workshops are free and open to all Hope College students, and lunch will be provided during both events.
Drawing inspiration from the layered textures of some of her family’s houses in Monterrey, Villarreal’s work is a meditation on home and remembrance. She explores their worn walls — a space marked by time and shifting fortunes, as a symbol of endurance to transform the gallery’s surfaces into an immersive installation that reimagines structure and form. Throughout the performance video, the viewer can see Villarreal enact a quiet ritual, washing a weathered wall, turning this simple gesture into an act of unveiling the layers of memory. Her intervention captures the ways in which social and temporal imprints mark inhabited spaces, layering them with memory, culture and history.
Through “Spaces We Inhabit,” Villarreal invites viewers to see the places in which they reside as more than structures but intimate repositories of memory, heritage and strength. This exhibition offers a moment to reflect on the warmth that resonates in the concept of home — especially during wintertime when most of time is spent indoors. It is both a celebration of resilience and an invitation to connect with the quiet strength that binds viewers to the spaces held dear, transforming the gallery into a contemplative realm.
Laura Villarreal, who works and lives in Miami, is an interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of fiber, painting and photography. Through the use of embroidery, paint, and textile on paper and canvas, she creates a transdisciplinary language and poetry inspired by the vivid colors and ancient traditions of her Mexican roots. Born in Mexico in 1971, she immigrated to the United States in the late 1990s, a process that underscored the economic and social disparities between the two countries. Creating tensions among her multimedia works, Villarreal integrates both environmental geographies comprising her life, questioning issues of identity, sense of place, longing, and memory.
Villarreal holds a MA in analysis and management of contemporary art from the University of Barcelona, Spain. She studied at the University of North Carolina, the New York School of Visual Arts, and the Art Students League in New York. Her select individual exhibitions include the Instituto Cultural de Mexico in Miami, the Embassy of Chile in Washington, D.C., the Centro Cultural Fatima in Mexico and the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles. She participated in Parc Lima, Chaco Chile and Pinta Miami. She has curated for the Mexican Cultural Institute in Miami, part of the Consulate dedicated to the promotion of Mexican artists in the U.S., and currently directs art education programs for young audiences in the city of Key Biscayne, Florida.
Sofía Sánchez Borboa is a distinguished Mexican curator who has held roles at the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil in Mexico City, the Sullivan Galleries and the Field Museum in Chicago. With more than 20 independently curated exhibitions, her work emphasizes immersive, interactive art experiences that often center on storytelling, identity politics and cultural memory. She holds a bachelor’s degree in art history from Centro de Cultura Casa Lamm and an MA in visual and critical studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Recently, she published “Anyone Who Has Never Been Bored Cannot Be a Storyteller,” a fragmentary narrative of Coyoacán, Mexico City.
The De Pree Gallery is open weekdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Those without a Hope College ID, which is necessary to gain access through the front door, should call the Department of Art and Art History at 616-395-7500 to gain entry.
To inquire about accessibility or if you need accommodations to fully participate in the event, please email accommodations@hope.edu. Updates related to events are posted when available at hope.edu/calendar in the individual listings.
The De Pree Art Center and Gallery is located at 275 Columbia Ave., between 10th and 13th streets