About Me

Marylu E. Herrera (she/her) is a Chicago-based Chicana collage, printmedia, craft, and fiber artist who uses the home as a political and personal site where celebration is a form of existence and resistance.

Herrera earned her BFA in Studio Art from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston at Tufts University and her MFA in Printmedia from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She currently works as the Communication and Design Coordinator at LATITUDE Chicago.

Herrera’s work has been exhibited at Chicago Art Department, Comfort Station, RUSCHWOMAN, Woman Made Gallery, SITE Galleries, Hyde Park Art Center, and Tish & Koppelman Galleries. Her Artist Book, Me Voy, is a part of the Artist Book Special Collections of SMFA & Tufts Library Archive in Boston. She is currently a Chicago Art Department Resident and a part of The Center Program at Hydepark Art Center. Most recently, Herrera has been awarded the Chicago DCASE 2023 Individual Artists Program Grant.

Her collage work has been featured in New York Magazine (The Cut), Los Angeles Times, Bitch Media, and Eater.com.

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Artist Statement

As a Chicana, I use the home as a political and personal site where celebration is a form of existence and resistance.

Over time, the miscellaneous memorabilia collected by my family and myself prompts my installations and sculptures to install them within unique spaces within my home. This practice is a familial one where I follow after my father who installed three large statues of eagles in my backyard, and my grandfather who used his bedroom as a recording studio for cassette tapes he recorded and mixed within the span of 1994 -2009. 

In my practice, I use Rasquache and Domesticana aesthetics to create arrangements that utilize the craft of women's works to retell cultural and familial memories with the use of decoration as material expression. Collections and archives are central to my practice. I use arrangements of memorabilia, devotional icons, angels, family photos, candles, saint icons, pop culture characters like Hello Kitty, party material, gems, stickers, and natural and synthetic flowers to build temporary altars, sculptures like Coronas, and ornate and ”cluttered” installations. 

In addition, I use photography to capture the artwork I make within my own home space, such as altars, which then becomes the artwork shared with the public. The photograph is an ephemera and record but at the same time, it functions to distance the viewer from the actual altars and artworks that are made to exist within my home. The distance is important in asserting that my culture and home and the artworks that I create within are not to be interacted with by the public. They are personal and sacred. In particular, the home and backyard are active sites for my practice because they are spaces of celebration and community.