Esperanza Gama

Barquito de papel – etching, two color plates
La mentira – etching, three color plates

Esperanza Gama was born and educated in Guadalajara, Mexico. She graduated from the School of Fine Arts at the University of Guadalajara with a B.F.A. in 1984. After moving to Paris in 1988, Gama studied printmaking and drawing for two years at the École des Beaux Arts in Chaville.

In 2003 Gama was awarded the Sor Juana Achievement Award for Visual Arts from the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago. She has received three Illinois Arts Council Partial Support Grants: an International Program Grant to help produce Stigma, a series of etchings created in 2005; a Residency Artists International Program Grant for a group of etchings entitled Los mágicos, which were completed and printed in Guadalajara in 2007; and a Residency Artists International Program Grant for her series of etchings Las monarcas, completed in 2009.

In March 2008, her installation celebrating Our Lady of Guadalupe, To the Queen of the Sun and the Moon, opened at the Chicago History Museum as a part of the exhibition Catholics in Chicago. In October 2009, Gama was selected to participate in an exhibition at the National Museum of Mexican Art entitled Rastros y Crónicas: Women of Juarez. During April 2010, her solo exhibition Adelitas, soldaderas, y otras revolucionarias, opened at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana.

© Esperanza Gama