Ana González Barragán

Lives and works in Denver, CO

Artist statement

Ana González Barragán (b. 1989, Mexico City) is a sculptor and researcher whose work examines the cultural, geological, and political histories embedded in stones and minerals. Her practice investigates the entanglement of extractive industries, post-industrial capitalism, and patriarchal systems, asking how dominant narratives commodify bodies and landscapes through processes of extraction. Working primarily with obsidian, marble, and other materials shaped by long aesthetic and cultural histories, González creates sculptural installations that foreground the material and metaphorical agency of geological bodies. Through field research, material experimentation, and site-responsive practices, she traces the violence and exploitation associated with extraction—from the gendered politics and labor conditions of mining to the ecological consequences of industrial capitalism. Her research is grounded in sustained engagement with active and historical coal, marble, copper, silver, turquoise, and molybdenum mining sites across Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico, as well as a long-term engagement with obsidian mines in the Sierra de las Navajas in Hidalgo, Mexico.

Artwork