Location: Oakland, CA
Medium: Painting, weaving
Website: miguelarzabe.net
Miguel Arzabe (b. 1975, St. Louis, Missouri) is a painter and weaver based in Oakland, California. His parents are originally from Oruro, Bolivia, and his Andean heritage is central to his practice. He studied engineering before becoming an artist, receiving a BS from Carnegie Mellon University and an MS from Arizona State University. After relocating to the Bay Area for work, he pursued art full time and earned an MFA from UC Berkeley (2010). He has held residencies at the Headlands Center for the Arts; Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, Montalvo Arts Center, Millay Arts, Santa Fe Art Institute, and as a Facebook Artist in Residence.
Arzabe makes colorful and dynamic abstractions that draw on the cultural techniques and motifs of his Andean heritage — particularly Bolivian textile traditions — and bring them into dialogue with mathematics, pattern, and the landscapes of California and the American Southwest. His practice shifted significantly during a residency at the Santa Fe Art Institute, where he encountered weaving as a form; he now builds works by cutting painted canvases into strips and weaving them into new configurations, a process that bridges painting and textile. His work has been included in the 2025 survey Textiles x Art (Thames and Hudson AU).
de Young Museum, San Francisco (About Place, 2024–25); ICA San Francisco (The Poetics of Dimensions, 2024); Ever Gold [Projects] (San Francisco); David B. Smith Gallery (Denver); Shulamit Nazarian (Los Angeles); Headlands Center for the Arts
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