{"id":92966,"date":"2025-09-29T16:44:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T16:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/92966\/"},"modified":"2025-09-29T16:44:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T16:44:08","slug":"raul-de-lara-carves-surreal-sculptures-to-explore-belonging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/92966\/","title":{"rendered":"raul de lara carves surreal sculptures to explore belonging"},"content":{"rendered":"

Raul De Lara Reimagines Tools, Plants, and Furniture in Wood<\/p>\n

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Through January 11, 2026, the Contemporary Austin hosts the first solo museum exhibition<\/strong><\/a> in Texas of sculptor Raul De Lara, an artist known for his highly technical approach to woodworking<\/strong><\/a>. De Lara transforms everyday tools, plants, and furniture into anthropomorphic and surreal forms. These works act as vessels of memory, resilience, and humor, but also as pointed reflections on the immigrant experience, queer identity, and the liminal space of DACA status, the temporary US policy that offers young undocumented immigrants protection from deportation and the ability to work legally, though without a path to permanent residency or citizenship.<\/p>\n

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De Lara\u2019s background roots him in both Mexican and American traditions of making. Trained in Austin and later at Virginia Commonwealth University, he honors traditional woodworking while experimenting with scale, humor, and magical realism. His sculptures<\/strong><\/a> range from saints conjured out of branches to furniture reimagined with uncanny detail. \u2018Growing up, I would see craftsmen carve these saints out of branches,\u2019 he recalls. \u2018I always wonder, like, at what point does the branch become a saint?\u2019 he wonders.<\/strong><\/a> That threshold between the ordinary and the sacred, the native and the foreign, and the tool and the symbol is where his work finds its resonance.<\/p>\n

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Cavale II, 2023 | all images courtesy of Raul De Lara, unless stated otherwise<\/p>\n

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seven new works on view at the Contemporary Austin exhibition<\/p>\n

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For the show in Austin, his hometown after immigrating to the US at age twelve, De Lara completes seven new sculptures shaped from mesquite, walnut, cedar, and oak. The pieces reference wildflowers native to both Texas and northern Mexico, such as Damianita, Indian Blanket, and Sleepy Daisy. Their dual botanical origins parallel the artist\u2019s own exploration of cultural hybridity and contested belonging. \u2018Why can plants be native to two places, but never people?\u2019 he asks.<\/strong> By embedding this question into wood and form, the New York-based artist<\/strong><\/a> turns sculpture into a stage for negotiating identity and precarity.<\/p>\n

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the sculpture was made for Herm\u00e9s new Aspen Boutique\u2019s window display<\/p>\n

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When Woodworking Meets Belonging and Legal Uncertainty<\/p>\n

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Raul De Lara insists that the act of sharing is central to his practice. \u2018Some of the best works are the ones that, when you share yourself, you really get beyond just the object,\u2019 he says.<\/strong> \u2018When you can connect with people in that way\u2014thinking that our work can make people feel a sense of care, or want to care\u2014that\u2019s enough.\u2019 In Austin, the newly commissioned sculptures invite audiences to engage with beauty while confronting difficult questions of who gets to belong, how stories are carved into materials, and why plants are allowed a dual nativity denied to people.<\/p>\n

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The artist\u00a0himself describes the project as the most complex of his career. \u2018Honestly, this show\u2026 they\u2019re the most layered, and they have the capacity to fail. Pulling one off is a miracle, and I have, like, six miracles to do,\u2019 he shares.<\/strong> This balance of rigor and risk reflects the precariousness of his legal and social position under DACA. \u2018My legal standing here\u2014if the law changed tomorrow, that would be a different exhibition. It\u2019s a reality\u2026 I could not even make my own show.\u2019 In these remarks, the material and the political fuse, as woodworking becomes both a technical dance with fire and a metaphor for living in limbo.<\/p>\n

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these works act as vessels of memory, resilience, and humor<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Raul De Lara Reimagines Tools, Plants, and Furniture in Wood \u00a0 Through January 11, 2026, the Contemporary Austin…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92967,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[267],"tags":[365,362,363,364,366,18,117,966,19,17,7601,3489],"class_list":{"0":"post-92966","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-eire","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-exhibitions","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-sculpture","19":"tag-wood-and-timber-architecture-and-design"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}