Porfirio Gutiérrez is a multidisciplinary textile artist and cultural innovator whose work brings the cultural and artistic legacies of his Zapotec heritage into dialogue with the visual languages of Modernism. His practice addresses migration, and identity while challenging dominant perceptions of art in relation to ancestral creative knowledge.

Based in Ventura, California, Gutiérrez was born and raised in the Zapotec textile community of Teotitlán del Valle in Oaxaca, Mexico. His contemporary experiences—alongside the ancestral knowledge systems that formed him as an artist—offer new ways of seeing art today.

While there is no direct translation for “artist” in Zapotec, there exists a long-held cultural understanding that honors those who carry that responsibility within their communities. Gutiérrez centers his practice in this understanding, embodying that role through large-scale installations, performances, textile sculptures, and woven works that expand the language of Zapotec weaving traditions.

Gutiérrez has taught materials and color at Harvard University and serves as an advisor to the Smithsonian Institution.

His work is held in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Tucson Museum of Art. A selection of Gutiérrez’s dye materials has also been documented and added to the Harvard Art Museums’ Forbes Pigment Collection, a world-renowned archive of artist materials.