Your browser is out-of-date!
Update your browser to view this website correctly. Update my browser now
daniela del mar
MFA Fellowship 2026
daniela del mar (University of New Mexico) is the recipient of a 2026 Master of Fine Arts Fellowship in Painting & Sculpture.
daniela del mar (they/ellx) is a queer, Kiltre transdisciplinary artist, researcher, and educator working between Tiwa, Tewa, and Pueblo Territory (New Mexico, USA) and Diaguita Territory/Wallmapú (Central and Northern Chile). Grounded in poetics, reciprocity, abolition, and public intervention, their practice merges weaving, sculpture, and book arts with cultural and land-based practices, often through collaborative publishing and collective process. Growing up in diaspora, poetry became another native language—expanding into haptic, material, and communal forms that act as shared shelter.
Their work centers sculptural (concrete) poems as a nexus of text, textile, translation, and ecological kinship. Through installations and community collaboration, they explore anti-colonial language practices, intergenerational knowledge, and memory, to create relational structures that bridge embodied epistemologies and Native Presents/Native Futurisms imagined across hemispheres. daniela has co-founded multiple initiatives, including the Poetry Salon Broadside Project (2014–2020), a printed series for QT/BIPOC writers; letra chueca press (2014–2020), a Spanglish press focused on transborder identity and Latiné printmaking; and Seed & Bloom, an annual poetry publication created with incarcerated students at the Penitentiary of New Mexico (2024-ongoing). Their work has been exhibited at galleries, museums, and countless community spaces and universities, nationally and internationally.
mountain khipu, an interrupted poem, 2026, shipping container, cotton, walnut dye, natural fibers, magnetic hooks, and palo santo ash at 5:17 pm MST, 8 x 20 x 8.5 ft.
“Día a día te volviste/ la pobre piedra quedada,/ la pobre piedra que duerme/ y dura y odia la llama/ y eres, ya, todos tus muertos/ antes de ser sepultada,2 2025, wool, cotton, borrowed soil, and copper nails, 50 x 65 x 9 in.
2. Gabriela Mistral, “Cobre (Copper),” Poema de Chile. 1967.
Aguaá/ Meandro tu kenko /Gozo espiral/ ¿Quién te ensució?,3 2025, wild clay, mica slip, and single channel projection, 18.5 x 18.5 x 7.25 in.
3. Cecilia Vicuña, “Unuy Quita”, Francisco Zegers Editor,. La Wik’uña. (Santiago, Chile: Atenea Impresores Ltda., 1990), 39.
Do you think the water will forget what we have done, what we continue to do?,4 2025, wild clay, red and white slip, alpaca wool, and natural pigments, 8 x 18 x 9 in.
4. Diaz, Natalie. “The First Water is the Body,” 2020. Postcolonial Love Poem. Graywolf Press, pg. 12.
untitled (como leer), 2024, laser-etched borrowed river, 7 x 9 x 1 in.
untitled (como saber), 2024, wood, tapete, and borrowed river, 28 x 95 x 10 in.
untitled (como tocar), 2024, steer manure and wildfire carbon, 96 x 100 ft.
mountain khipu, an interrupted poem, 2026, shipping container, cotton, walnut dye, natural fibers, magnetic hooks, and palo santo ash at 5:17 pm MST, 8 x 20 x 8.5 ft.
“Día a día te volviste/ la pobre piedra quedada,/ la pobre piedra que duerme/ y dura y odia la llama/ y eres, ya, todos tus muertos/ antes de ser sepultada,2 2025, wool, cotton, borrowed soil, and copper nails, 50 x 65 x 9 in.
2. Gabriela Mistral, “Cobre (Copper),” Poema de Chile. 1967.
Aguaá/ Meandro tu kenko /Gozo espiral/ ¿Quién te ensució?,3 2025, wild clay, mica slip, and single channel projection, 18.5 x 18.5 x 7.25 in.
3. Cecilia Vicuña, “Unuy Quita”, Francisco Zegers Editor,. La Wik’uña. (Santiago, Chile: Atenea Impresores Ltda., 1990), 39.
Do you think the water will forget what we have done, what we continue to do?,4 2025, wild clay, red and white slip, alpaca wool, and natural pigments, 8 x 18 x 9 in.
4. Diaz, Natalie. “The First Water is the Body,” 2020. Postcolonial Love Poem. Graywolf Press, pg. 12.
untitled (como leer), 2024, laser-etched borrowed river, 7 x 9 x 1 in.
untitled (como saber), 2024, wood, tapete, and borrowed river, 28 x 95 x 10 in.
untitled (como tocar), 2024, steer manure and wildfire carbon, 96 x 100 ft.
