Patricia Ayres

New York, US, 1975

Patricia Ayres is a contemporary American artist born in New York, where she currently lives and works. Her initial training in fashion design at the Fashion Institute of Technology provided her with technical skills that she later applied to art, complemented by a BFA from Brooklyn College (2015), an MFA in sculpture from Hunter College (2018), and a residency at the prestigious Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2019). This hybrid background between fashion and visual arts defines her unique approach, where she explores the human body through industrial materials and techniques of constriction.

Her sculptural work is characterized by totemic anthropomorphic figures wrapped in military elastics, latex, padding, wood, and elements such as anointing oil or iodine, evoking themes of societal restriction, isolation, and psychological control. Influenced by her Catholic upbringing, the U.S. prison system, and bodily norms, Ayres navigates anxiety, rebellion, and sexuality through forms that suggest confinement and vulnerability, transforming the abject into something deeply empathetic and beautiful. Her works present a dynamic interpretation of the human body through neutral colors, raw geometric shapes, and large scales that balance the massive with the vulnerable.

Internationally recognized, her pieces are part of collections such as the Rubell Museum (Miami and Washington D.C.), the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, the de la Cruz Collection, Muzeum Susch (Switzerland), and TANK Shanghai (China).