ARECIS TIBURCIO ZANE
MFA ’26 Fine Arts Low-Residency
I am a painter whose portraits and self‑portraits explore my relationship with my mother and how that bond shapes my understanding of womanhood. While my practice is rooted in personal narrative, I translate these stories through material processes that make them tangible—held not only in memory but in the physicality of paint. Each work becomes a site where identity is negotiated through surface, texture, and pattern, reflecting the complexities of becoming a woman shaped by other women.Through painting, I reimagine moments from my family albums and by embody my mothers poses or slip into her clothes, creating a playful doubling that merges her past with my presentI am drawn to the tension between opacity and transparency, using them to mirror the instability of memory. Blurring, lifting, or partial disappearance becomes a metaphor for how stories shift over time. By layering paint washes over archival fragments, I create temporal slippages where past and present coexist. Ultimately, my work negotiates inheritance and self‑definition, holding the complexity of being shaped by other women while insisting on defining myself on my own terms.
Featured in:
ARECIS TIBURCIO ZANE (b. 2000) is a multidisciplinary artist whose artwork centers on her experience navigating familial dynamics and family history as a Latina woman. She uses these intimate personal narratives to create new identities for herself and the people in her life. She obtained a BFA in Photography from St. John’s University (2022) and an MFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design (2026). Arecis has showcased work at The Nancy Williard and Eric Bloom Archives, Yeh Art Gallery, Sociologist for Women in Society, and her mother’s living room.
