In his sculptural work Raul De Lara (b. 1991, Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico; lives and works in New York, NY) reimagines everyday objects—chairs, ladders, plants, and other household items—as surreal, anthropomorphic forms. Blending technical fluency in woodworking with material play, humor, and poetic sensibility, his sculptures challenge fixed notions of form and identity, suggesting both can be continually dismantled and reassembled. Sourcing his lived experience of migration, adaptation, and cultural hybridity, De Lara explores identity as a fluid and mutable construct shaped across borders and over time.

This exhibition—De Lara’s first solo museum show in Texas—marks a personal and artistic homecoming for the artist, who immigrated to Austin more than twenty years ago. Leading up to HOST, he returned to Austin and visited the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center to study flora native to both northern Mexico and Texas—the Indian blanket, sleepy daisy, and damianita. In the resulting works, he recasts wild-growing flora as houseplants, invoking the ways in which immigrants are subject to systems of classification, containment, and control. “Why can plants—but never people—be native to two places?” De Lara asks, reflecting on the politics of assimilation and the systems that determine who or what is permitted to belong. A DACA recipient, De Lara articulates the paradox of contingence—living in a country while never fully belonging to it, or to the place he left behind. His plants evoke this liminal state: rooted, yet contained; sustained, yet unable to flourish.

For De Lara, household objects and plants are our silent companions—witnesses to our everyday acts of care, endurance, and quiet resistance; woodworking is not only an act of making, but a form of devotion and an evolving language for expressing the intricate negotiations that shape and sanction the struggle to belong.

HOST: Raul De Lara is curated by Julie Le, Assistant Curator, The Contemporary Austin.

About the Artist

Raul De Lara (b. 1991, Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico) is a sculptor based in New York City. His work explores the emotive and storytelling potential of materials such as wood, stone, sand, steel, and leather. Fond of humor, magical realism, and the uncanny, his sculptures draw from the visual languages found in flora, furniture design, and cultural artifacts. De Lara immigrated to the U.S. at age 12 and has been a recipient of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) since 2012. His work reflects on themes of nationality, queer identity, and the immigrant experience. Alongside his artistic practice, De Lara engages in research that preserves, honors, and evolves traditional uses of wood in Mexican and American cultures, while combining them with new developments from the global woodworking industry. De Lara received his MFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University and a BFA in Studio Art from the University of Texas at Austin. Recent and upcoming exhibitions include the SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA (2025); the Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ (2025); and the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture, Riverside, CA (2025). Select honors include the Maxwell/Hanrahan Award in Craft, NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship, Art in America’s “New Talent” Top 20 Artists to Watch, Hermès Paris Inaugural Aspen Installation, Penland School of Craft Winter Residency Distinguished Fellowship, Silver Art Projects Residency, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) Residency, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts Open Studio Residency, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown Fellowship, National Park Service Outer Cape Artists-in-Residence Consortium, Ox-Bow School of Art Fellowship, Chicago Artists Coalition HATCH Residency, Queens Arts Fund New Work Grant, New York City Artist Corps Grant, and the International Sculpture Center Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award.

Photo: Artist Raul De Lara. Image courtesy the artist. Photograph by Hannah Edelman.

Acknowledgements

The Contemporary Austin’s Exhibition Program is supported in part by Malú Alvarez, Rachel and Jeff Arnold, Bettina and Brian Barrow, Adrienne and Christopher Bosh, Suzanne Deal Booth, Debbie Dupré and Richard Rothberg, Kathleen and Christopher Loughlin, Chris Mattsson, Danielle Nieciag and Brian Sharples, O’Shaughnessy – Rivers Family Fund, Zarmeena Vendal, and anonymous donors. Exhibitions and programming are also made possible by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Still Water Foundation, and Stratus Properties.

The Contemporary Austin is supported by the generosity of its Board of Trustees, Members and donors.

Additional support for HOST: Raul De Lara is provided by Orange Barrel Media.  

Press Release

HOST: Raul De Lara Press Release