Gina Herrera

We are pleased to present a solo exhibition by Gina Herrera, the artist's debut exhibition in New York.

Bringing together large-scale three-dimensional sculptures, wall-based works, and interactive installation environment, the exhibition is designed to draw viewers into a world of curiosity, reflection, and discovery, and continues Herrera's ongoing engagement with nature, transformation, environmental consequence, and the complex relationship between the human and the elemental worlds.

Herrera is a California-based mixed-media artist, educator, Army veteran, and artist of Tesuque Pueblo and Costa Rican heritage. She received her BFA in Art Education from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago while serving in the Armed Forces and was deployed overseas in support of multiple military operations. Following her final tour of duty, she earned her MFA in Studio Arts from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

At the heart of Herrera's practice is a vision of herself as a protector—of the environment, of the natural world, and of those who exist on the margins. Her work is informed by a lifelong experience of navigating multiple worlds: Indigenous and contemporary, military and artistic, educator and activist. Through immersive installations and emotionally resonant sculpture, Herrera creates spaces that invite viewers to consider their relationship to nature, community, and the enduring search for belonging.

The exhibition unfolds across two distinct gallery spaces: In the front gallery sits the throne-like sculpture The Misfit Chair, 2026, composed of reclaimed metal scraps and mannequin legs, which she invites viewers to sit upon and interact with. Throughout her life—as a veteran, teacher, Indigenous woman, and artist—Herrera has often felt like she exists between worlds. That sense of not quite fitting in has become a central theme in her work, though it is expressed with warmth, humor, and empathy rather than alienation. Herrera hopes that this sculpture, and the exhibition at large, will help visitors contemplate their own relationship to their feelings of belonging and individuality.

In the main gallery, Herrera expands on these concepts materially into a series of large-scale sculptures, often using rebar, steel, salvaged materials, and found objects. The forms feel both industrial and organic—twisting structures that evoke tree limbs, nests, roots, animals, and human figures. Many of the works explore transformation, resilience, protection, and the experience of navigating multiple identities. Mounted on a rotating pedestal, The Balance of Bravery, 2025, shifts in relation to the viewer as it rotates slowly on a pedestal, like a ballerina in a music box, revealing different profiles, materials, and visual relationships as it turns in space.

Also on view are a series of newly created wall-based sculptures constructed from handmade paper pulp and plasma-cut metal frames. Delicate yet structured, these works bring together materials that seem to occupy opposing worlds: the vulnerable, tactile qualities of paper pulp set within their brightly colored, ornate metal frames painted in bright colors.

Herrera's practice has long been rooted in the transformation of discarded, industrial, and natural materials. Her sculptures emerge through an intuitive process of gathering, assembling, cutting, welding, casting, and recombining, allowing unexpected forms to develop through the interaction of materials. Organic shapes and gestures frequently coexist with plasma-cut steel, salvaged objects, textiles, plastics, and other remnants of industrial and consumer culture. The resulting works can appear simultaneously anthropomorphic, otherworldly, ritualistic, and strangely familiar.

Herrera's nearly twenty-five years of military service, including deployments overseas, profoundly shaped her understanding of landscape, conflict, and the environmental consequences of human activity. During her service in Iraq, Herrera encountered the vast accumulation of discarded military and industrial materials, an experience that became an important catalyst for her artistic practice. Her work has since developed into an investigation of environmental responsibility and humanity's relationship to the natural world. Herrera's sculptures offer an encounter with materials in states of transformation—soft and hard, organic and manufactured, static and kinetic, intimate and monumental. Together, the works ask viewers to consider what happens when the remnants of human activity are returned to the realm of imagination and given new physical and emotional life.

In recent years, Herrera's work has been exhibited nationally, including at the Chicago Cultural Center, IL; Oceanside Museum of Art, CA; Blue Star Contemporary in San Antonio, TX; the Lancaster Museum of Art and History, CA, among others. In 2025, she was among the recipients of the Ucross Fellowship for Native American Artists, and her work was included in Resilience at the Ucross Art Gallery. This exhibition The Misfit Dollhouse was generously supported by the National Endowment for the Arts.