Maria Yolanda Liebana is a first-generation Latinx artist based in New York City. Her artistic practice is shaped by her liminal ethnic status, underground cultures, and conventional sexist attitudes toward kitsch. Liebana's work is fueled by an obsession with celebrity, pop motifs, media in all formats, aesthetics, and excessive consumption, as well as the seductive promises that these symbols offer. Liebana confronts wealth inequality, racial and gender stereotyping, and her own disillusionment with the American dream as a first-generation Latinx artist. Liebana holds a BFA in Art and Design Education from Pratt Institute and an MFA in Studio Art from Maine College of Art. She has exhibited at Field Projects, Local Project Art Space, Trestle Contemporary Art Gallery, Ground Floor Gallery, and Helen Day Art Center. She attended Vermont Studio Center and Pickwick Independent Press in Portland, Maine. She is a 2018 and 2020 Queens Council on the Arts New Works Grant Artist recipient and was Kates-Ferri Projects' May 2021 Artist in Residence.
