Rosalia Torres-Weiner

November 2022 Featured Artist

Artist Bio:

I am an artist, activist and community leader in Charlotte, NC. My art captures the themes, colors and rich symbolism of my native home of Mexico. In 2010, I shifted the focus of my work from commercial art to art activism, after witnessing the repeated injustices and dysfunction of our immigration system. My work is featured in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Anacostia Museum has been exhibited in venues including the McColl Center for Arts and Innovation, Levine Museum of the New South, Elder Gallery of Contemporary Art, the Leyland Gallery at Georgia College, UNCC’s Projective Eye Gallery, the City of Raleigh Museum, the Latin American Center for Arts Gallery, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, and the Mexican Cultural Institute at the Mexican Embassy in Washington D.C. My public murals celebrate the rich history as well as the changing demographics of the South. I also use my art to document social conditions, and to raise awareness about issues that are affecting immigrant communities such as family separation, access to public education, racism and moving beyond common stereotypes. My story “The Magic Kite” was adapted by The Children’s Theatre of Charlotte, and is also performed as part of my “Suitcase Stories” one-woman show, which was featured at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. I have been a featured speaker for the North Carolina ASC, Creative Mornings, Johnson & Wales University, George Washington University, the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture, and the Southern Foodways Alliance. I combine my creative process with community engagement and action in a practice I call “Artivism.” I have a strong track record of successful collaboration with the ASC in community arts programming. I have worked with The Community School of the Arts, LaCa Projects, UNCC and Johnson and Wales University. I operate the Red Calaca Mobile Art Studio, a 24’ “Art Truck” that is a mobile creative space that I use to take art into communities that are underserved by cultural institutions. I have conducted dozens of artmaking workshops, impacting hundreds of participants with my art truck & the ASC’s Culture Blocks Program. My art promotes dialogue around social justice issues and community concerns, and brings together a diverse citizenry through community-based, grassroots collaboration. The murals that I am most proud of were collaborative works with the community. I love to take the history, vision and character of a community and represent it with my art. I strongly believe in the transformational power of public art and in the use of art as a connector of communities and a method of enriching societies.