Gabrielle Vazquez
Gabrielle (Gabby) Vazquez is a Nuyorican-Dominican York multidisciplinary artist, curator, costume designer, and anthropological researcher whose practice bridges textiles, archival research, performance, and public space to examine migration, memory, and diasporic identity. Working across exhibitions, community-based programming, costume, and material research, she investigates how textiles and modes of materiality function as living archives carrying histories of labor, colonialism, resistance, and belonging. Expanding a fashion-as-art methodology, she approaches material culture as sites where anthropology and aesthetics converge—inviting viewers of her artistic and curatorial practice to imagine future forms of sovereignty and cultural assertion.
Central to her practice is Diasporican Queens, an ongoing interdisciplinary research project unfolding through performance, costume, and ethnographic research. It began as a study of Puerto Rican identity within U.S. pageant systems, but has since evolved into an exploration of site, embodiment, and cultural memory across Brooklyn—beginning with Boerum Hill. Collaborations with a senior center and local residents have helped shape it into a living archive—one that honors community knowledge and intergenerational care.
Drawing on anthropological methods alongside artistic and curatorial practice, Vazquez develops exhibitions and public programs, connecting academic research with community storytelling and cultural organizing. Her work has been presented at the Latina/o Studies Association, The Latinx Project at New York University, the International Peace Research Association, and The New School's Anthropology & Design Symposium. She has curated exhibitions in New York and internationally, including the Apex Art–supported exhibition TMWYGH in São Paulo, Brazil, and has exhibited work at venues including The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center, EFA Space, Flux Factory, House of Yes, NYFW, and Brooklyn Fashion Week. Her recent costume design credits include Sugar Daddy (Soho, London) and Olivia O: The Musical.
Vazquez's professional practice spans arts organizations, public art, education, civic engagement, and cultural organizing. She has held positions at BRIC Arts Media, Groundswell Community Mural Project, The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center—via the ArtTable fellowship program—the Office of New York State Senator Julia Salazar, the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP), and has worked on several NYC-based electoral campaigns. She was an artist-in-residence with the Joan Mitchell Foundation's Early Art Practitioner program, participated in the Center for Urban Pedagogy's Design Justice as Practice residency, and completed the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts' Robert Blackburn Printmaking Studio Immersion Project residency.
Vazquez is a recipient of grants and awards from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), the Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC), The New School for Social Research, and the William Randolph Hearst Scholarship. She holds a BFA in Fashion Design from Parsons School of Design and an MA in Anthropology from The New School for Social Research.
