Cabell Molina

California-born artist Cabell Molina, currently residing in Brooklyn, NY, creates bold and fashionable collage/paintings reminiscent of mid-century femininity. Her creative process—“to deconstruct and construct”—involves assembling old wallpaper, fabrics, magazine clippings, and found elements, along with hand-painted portraits and figures. Her work is as layered thematically as it is physically, both celebrating the bygone glamour of mid-century fashion and deconstructing its patriarchal underpinnings. Molina reclaims classic femininity as multi-faceted, giving voice and texture to lost imagery. Her large-scale pieces tug in a way only the past can while also pushing for a colorful expansion of a “woman’s place.”

Raised by a traditional 1950s mother, Molina developed a fascination with female representation, perplexed at how women pre-feminist movement could appear so happy while cornered into domesticity, much like her mother. Ironically, years later, she found herself trapped in a controlling marriage. After it ended, Molina began creating work that empowers women, giving them new voices and reshaping old familiar tropes.

Her works read as meditations on feminism, full of colorful clutter and a layered sense of time, space, and memory. Molina studied graphic design, art direction, and fine art at San Diego State University and at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles.

Molina’s work pushes the viewer to dive into the layers and emerge with a newfound appreciation of femininity, to notice the revolution behind the submissive smile. Her work is exhibited frequently and owned internationally. In recent years, her work has been featured in CNN Style, The New York Times, The Cut, and Vogue.


Artist Statement:

By portraying strength and power as part of the female experience at a time when women were marginalized, I hope to give new voices to these women and reshape old familiar narratives.


www.cabellmolinaart.com