Maria A. Guzmán Capron: Penumbra in Cloth and Colour
A pair of elongated hands meet mid-stride, fingers interlacing as if testing the weight of trust. Elsewhere, a body fragments into lilac and rose, its limbs multiplying, slipping between states of concealment and display. In another work, figures fold into one another—stitched, layered, inseparable—while a shadow lingers close, not as absence but as a quiet companion. These are not painted illusions but constructed presences: hand-dyed, screen-printed, cut and sewn into plush, tactile form.
Maria A. Guzmán Capron. “Algo Escondido,” 2025. Hand dyed and screen printed fabric, thread and batting, 68 1/2 x 58 1/2 in. Courtesy of the artist and Nazarian / Curcio.
Such is the language of Maria A. Guzmán Capron, whose figurative textiles occupy a charged space between image and object, surface and structure. Her works insist on touch—not only as subject but as method. Cotton and silk, pigment and thread, are handled, manipulated and re-authored into dense, sensuous compositions. The result is a body of work that feels intimate yet expansive, rooted in materiality while reaching toward something more elusive: the unstable, layered nature of identity itself.
It is from within this textile vocabulary that Penumbra, Capron’s new exhibition at the Sarasota Art Museum of Ringling College of Art and Design, takes shape. On view from April 19 to September 27, the presentation gathers ten large-scale works, several newly made, that extend her exploration of cultural hybridity, companionship and the porous boundaries of selfhood.
Maria A. Guzmán Capron. “Te Dejé Quererme,” 2025. Hand dyed and screen printed fabric, thread and batting, 47 1/2 x 55 1/2 in. Courtesy of the artist and Nazarian / Curcio.
The title offers a useful point of entry. A penumbra—the partial shadow where light and darkness coexist—becomes a metaphor for Capron’s figures, which resist fixed definition. Born in Milan to Peruvian and Colombian parents and later relocating to Texas, the artist’s own experience of migration and multiplicity underpins the work. Her figures are never singular; they are composites, carrying traces of ancestry, geography and lived encounter.
Textiles, with their long associations with domestic labour and inherited knowledge, become a particularly resonant medium for this inquiry. Capron’s earlier reliance on thrifted fabrics spoke to adaptation—making do, reconfiguring what is available. Here, however, she shifts decisively toward producing her own materials. The hand-dyeing and screen-printing processes lend a heightened chromatic intensity, but also introduce a slower, more deliberate rhythm. Each surface is not just assembled but conceived from the outset.
Maria A. Guzmán Capron. “Déjame Llevarte,” 2025. Hand dyed and screen printed fabric, thread and batting, 69 x 57 1/2 in. Courtesy of the artist and Nazarian / Curcio.
In Déjame Llevarte (2025), two figures walk hand in hand, their bodies gradually merging as they move forward. The gesture is simple, but its implications ripple outward: intimacy as transformation, companionship as a form of becoming. In Algo Escondido (2025), fragmented limbs and saturated colour fields suggest identities in flux—partially obscured, partially revealed. Meanwhile, Espejo (2024) collapses bodily boundaries altogether, its layered figures reflecting a psyche shaped across cultures and geographies.
Maria A. Guzmán Capron. “Te Dejé Quererme” (detail), 2025. Hand dyed and screen printed fabric, thread and batting, 47 1/2 x 55 1/2 in. Courtesy of the artist and Nazarian / Curcio.
Throughout, Capron disrupts the notion of the artwork as distant or untouchable. Her exaggerated hands reach, hold, beckon. Her figures exchange glances, but often one meets the viewer directly, drawing them into the composition’s social fabric. Even the shadow—traditionally cast as a negative—emerges here as an extension, a protector, a presence that affirms rather than diminishes.
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Further Information:
Maria A. Guzmán Capron: Penumbra is on show from 19 April until 27 Sept 2026, at the Sarasota Art Museum of Ringling College of Art and Design, Sarasota, Florida, USA.
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Image Credits:
Lead: Maria A. Guzmán Capron. “Brisa Corriendo,” 2024. Hand dyed and screen printed fabrics and thread, 76 x 56 in. Courtesy of the artist and Nazarian / Curcio.
All further images as credited in captions.