Maritza Mosquera is a visual artist, teaching-artist, poet, painter, printmaker and cook, who creates visual arts and spaces for dialogue. Her works are often presented as installation-diaries about relationships and ideas within herself and her communities. They reference personal and public desires such as the Earth’s healing from fracking, the story of skin, the end of oppression, sweet home recipes, and the power of voice.

Her Human Liberation Projects takes her as a Teaching-Artist working in schools and organizations activated by humans that are facing special challenges such as: war trauma, dementia, incarceration, poverty, sexual victimization, and regular life.

She writes poetry. This and her visual work have been presented locally in Pittsburgh, regionally and nationally, as well as in Ecuador, Ireland, Costa Rica, Mexico and Chile. Funded by the Multi-Cultural Arts Initiative of the Pittsburgh Foundation, the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Americans for The Arts, the Buncher Foundation Heinz Endowment, The Pittsburgh Foundation and Arts Midwest, her work has traveled and explored places that she loves. Maritza is a longtime printmaker. She studied printmaking during her undergraduate years at the Maryland Institute College of Art, continued with Tamarind artist Rudy Puzzatti at Indiana University, and Robert Blackburn in NYC. She joined the Fabric Workshop, Philadelphia as an Intern and moved to be its primary Construction Technician and then first Director of Education until 1991. She has been honored to receive an award to represent American Printmaking in Japan and was one of the American guests printmaking artists during Cork, Ireland's European Art Capital 2005. She moved to Pittsburgh to work at The Andy Warhol Museum, starting its first silkscreen programs in its first printing studio THE WEEKEND FACTORY, where he also curated various performances and community programs during her days as the Assistant Director of Education for The Warhol. More recently, she consulted The Kennedy Centers’ REACH art making studios on their community education space and programming.

Mosquera was born in Quito, Ecuador SA and currently works in her studio in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania USA. She received an MFA from University of Pennsylvania and BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art. She was a resident at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine and is a founding member of the #notwhite collective and is a Madwoman in The Attic member.

Pictured: pastels and pencils on silkscreen 2024

Website: https://maritzamosquera.net/
IG: @art_mosquera