She is most widely known for what she referred to as 'trapunto' paintings-massive works that she made by stuffing and stitching her painted canvases, instilling them with three-dimensional, quilt-like textural elements.
Mesa-Bains-who was born in 1943 in Santa Clara, California to a family of Mexican immigrants-has long been interested in these forms, which have evolved in her work over the decades into the large-scale installations she makes today.
"Most artists are telling a story, and to some degree I think most of us are following a particular set of questions over time, and they don't really change," she said in a 2023 interview with the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, which organised this exhibition, "the way we answer them changes."
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