A-dress: Power and Belief Exhibition Reception

Irma Sofia Poeter is holding a reception for her exhibition A-dress: Power and Belief at the San Diego Mesa College Art Gallery on Wednesday, October 7, from 4 to 7 PM. It's a good chance to meet her in person and see the work up close, with refreshments on hand.

Poeter is an autobiographical textile artist who treats the dress as a sculptural language and a second skin—a place where personal and collective narratives meet. She repurposes industrial, recycled, and artisanal fabrics into dresses, capes, and soft sculptures, tracing how meaning is stitched into what we wear and how the act of wearing becomes expression. One piece to look for is Baby Venus, a two-meter sculpture knitted from baby clothing. Her work explores identity, power, resistance, and the female experience, and she frames her practice as a re-evaluation of sewing as a high art rather than a domestic craft.

Her background is as layered as her textiles. Born in Arcadia and raised in Ensenada, Mexico, she studied architecture before becoming an artist at 30 after moving to Tijuana in the early 1990s. She now divides her time between San Diego and Tecate, where she built her own home and studio, Arcadia. She was a founding member of Grupo Martes in Tijuana, has lived in Oaxaca, and studied the Kumeyaay people of the border region. In 2019, CECUT published a retrospective of 25 years of her work.

The reception is on Wednesday, October 7, from 4 to 7 PM at the San Diego Mesa College Art Gallery (FA 103), 7250 Mesa College Dr., San Diego, CA 92111. The exhibition itself runs from October 5 to October 29, so you can come back later if you want more time with the pieces. There's also an artist talk scheduled for Wednesday, October 21. Admission is free and open to the public.