DELILAH MONTOYA

b. 1955, Ft Worth, Texas

Delilah Montoya was born in Texas to a Latina mother and an Anglo father. Her mother raised her in Nebraska until she relocated to New Mexico to attend college.  She studied at the University of New Mexico where she earned her BA, MA, and MFA in Photography.  While continuing to practice as a studio artist, she remained in academia where she has taught at the University of New Mexico, California State University, and the Institute of American Indian Arts. Montoya currently was a professor of Photography at the University of Houston in Texas.

 New Mexico held ancestral roots that nourished her exploration of her Chicana identity. Montoya’s photography conceptually delves into the experience of the Southwest people that is the mix of Native American, Aztec Mexican, and Spanish lineage.  These cultures offer rich historical traditions and folklore imagery based in spiritual and religious practices. Montoya visually explores this iconography to discuss and confront outsider assumptions on stereotypes and the “documentary gaze” towards the Mesoamerican community. 

 She uses traditional photographic techniques, mixed media, composites, printmaking and sculptural aspects to her work.  New and mixed mediums allow her to continue to push boundaries and make conceptually challenging work.  Her installations are narratives that involve not only the participation of the viewers cultural, historical, and spiritual knowledge but also their senses.

 Montoya’s photographic work is celebrated within the Latino community as well as internationally. She has shown extensively in solo and group exhibitions throughout the world. Her work can be found in private and public collections as the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, New Mexico Museum of Art, Mexican Museum, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.