Jami Porter Lara is a conceptual artist who is interested in the power of everyday objects, habits and gestures to shape and reshape the worlds in which we live. She digs into ideas about what is natural, obvious, and common sense for subtexts and erasures, often employing frictions between form and material to reveal what may be meant but not said, said but not heard, or heard but deliberately obscured. Through a broad range of formal approaches such as sculpture, sign-making, lithography and drawing as well as sewing and embroidery, Porter Lara explores the terrain where fictions of identity produce lived reality.
Porter Lara has exhibited extensively, and her work appears in many public and private collections, including the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the New Mexico Museum of Art, the Albuquerque Museum, and U.S. Art in Embassies. Her work has been featured in Art 21 Magazine, American Craft, Hyperallergic, on PBS, and more. In 2017, Artsy named her one of the artists shaping the future of ceramics. Notable fellowships include MacDowell, Yaddo and the Tamarind Institute. Recent exhibitions include the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe; and Craft Contemporary in Los Angeles, CA. She is represented by Gerald Peters Contemporary in Santa Fe and New York, and Simon Breitbard Fine Arts in San Francisco.