Margaret 'Quica' Alarcón is a Xicana, an indigenous identified woman born and raised in East Los Angeles.  She is a professional artist, teacher and community arts activist whose creative interests include mixed media, painting, drawing, printmaking, papel picado, and publishing.

 

She pursues her work to visually translate, document and reinterpret the history of her ancestors through a personal, contemporary context that reconnects everyday life to the sacred. Her work involves actively sifting and reworking within the roots of identity, spirituality and memory.

 

Margaret’s work has been published in books and journals notably in various Mujeres de Maiz Flor y Canto 'Zine' publications, Dia de Los Muertos: A Cultural Legacy, Past, Present & Future, Exhibition Catalog for Self Help Graphics & Art, Los Angeles, Chicana/o Remix: Art and Errata since the Sixties, Where are The Chicana Printmakers, in Just Another Poster? Chicano Graphic Arts in California, by Holly Barnet-Sanchez, Borderlands: Critical Subjectivity in Recent Chicana Art, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, by Judith L. Huacuja,  and El Imaginario Chicano: La iconografía civil y política chicana en Estados Unidos de América 1965-2000, in Prague.

 

Having actively co-developed the Los Angeles based women's community arts organization Mujeres de Maíz, (Women of Corn), Margaret consistently works with diverse media projects and cross-cultural aspects of the art world providing instruction and guidance to many young, and emerging artists. 

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She has exhibited her work in several galleries and museums throughout the country including CSU of Los Angeles, the Palos Verdes Art Center, Galeria Otra Vez in Self Help Graphics & Art, Avenue 50 Studio, the Láfia House Gallery Brewery Arts Complex in Los Angeles, the Snite Museum of Art in Notre Dame, Indiana, the Fowler Museum in UCLA, the Jersey City Museum in New Jersey, and the Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art in Austin Texas.

 

In 2015, Margaret was one of 5 artists chosen from a national pool of applicants, who were sent to the Taller Experimental de Gráfica in Havana, Cuba, for an unprecedented, one-week printmaking exchange. L.A. Havana, held a preview exhibition of the exchange at the 2016 L.A. Art Fair. This amazing and rare opportunity was provided through MOLAA, in partnership with Self Help Graphics & Art (SHG) and the Richardson Center for Global Engagement. 

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Margaret lives with her beloved companion Misael, their niece Lucía, and two spoiled cats in the Lincoln Heights community of Los Angeles.

 

Specialties:  Sculpture, mixed media, printmaking, papel picado, classical painting & drawing, publishing and art education (ages 5 and up).