Blanket Zone

Bella Maria Varela

September 26 — October 25, 2025
Opening: September 26, 6—9pm

From the federal takeover of her (Varela’s) hometown of Washington, D.C., to the gerrymandered maps drawn by Texas conservatives, Blanket Zone confronts the enclosure and erasure of marginalized communities.

Zoning—a government tool for managing land use—often excludes those most vulnerable. In practice, “blanket zoning” accelerates displacement by inviting corporate development and luxury condominiums, raising property values while intensifying surveillance of working-class neighborhoods. The result is the uprooting of poor Black and Brown residents and the dismantling of cultural ecosystems. By invoking the double meaning of “blanket zoning,” Varela underscores how bureaucratic policies and urban planning drive dispossession.

Using dye sublimation printing and repurposed fleece cobijas (blankets), Varela transforms everyday material culture into a blanket-fort–like structure that envelops and shelters a fuzzy re-creation of her childhood home. This soft architecture evokes makeshift shelters such as tent cities and refugee encampments, where displaced communities are often forced into informal living situations and survival depends on ordinary materials repurposed into protection and resistance. Blanket Zone invites visitors to enter, inhabit, and reflect; physically experiencing how softness and vulnerability can become tools of resistance.

Text by Bella Maria Varela in collaboration with Dr. Jonathan Cortez (Writing Consultant)

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Bella Maria Varela is a Washington, D.C.–born artist with ties to Texas. Her multimedia practice integrates photography, video, performance, and material-culture objects to explore her personal experience within American history and popular culture. Through her blanket-based installations and assemblage work, she creates a queer visual language that reflects her family’s immigration from Guatemala to the U.S. East Coast.

Her work has been exhibited at institutions including the Blaffer Art Museum (Houston, TX), Arts Fort Worth (Fort Worth, TX), Centro de Artes Gallery (San Antonio, TX), Visual Arts Center (Austin, TX), MASS Gallery (Austin, TX), Border Arts Residency (El Paso, TX), CAV Gallery (Las Cruces, NM), Stop Gap (Columbia, MO), Cohen New Works Festival (Austin, TX), 1415 Gallery (Albuquerque, NM), Troost Gardens (Kansas City, MO), Pidgin Palace Arts (Tucson, AZ), The Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), and has a forthcoming group exhibition at The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture (Riverside, CA). Varela earned her MFA in Photo, Video, and Imaging from the University of Arizona (2021) and currently serves as Assistant Professor of the Arts and Program Leader for the International Arts and Culture cohort with the Women’s Leadership Program at George Washington University in Washington D.C.