[1][2] Pilar Agüero-Esparza was born in Los Angeles and grew up in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of East L.A.[1] She credits her parents’ shoe shop for exposing her to the “potential and richness of materials” that informs much of her work.
[3][4] Her work explores themes of labor, domesticity, and representations of color in pieces that incorporate materials such as “skin-tone” crayons and woven leather.
[4] Agüero-Esparza sewed the papers into a quilt in the shape of a house, creating her 2009 installation piece “Homework House.” Questioning the issues of “ownership” that arose from the release of a box of “skin-tone” crayons, Agüero-Esparza melted down these crayons and cast the feet of her daughter, then age ten, in different colors.
[6] The resulting series of cast feet became the 2010 installation “Multicultural Crayons.” Agüero-Esparza made this piece as part of a 2019 Richmond Art Center exhibition exploring “the interchange of ideas and material, the crisscrossing of bodies and objects, and the weaving of histories and personal narratives”.
[7] A wooden board is painted in acrylic with “skin-tone” colored lines, then merged with a woven square of leather strips in similar hues.