Booking and details
Reserve Your SpotDates Fri, Feb 20, 2026, at 6:30pm
Venue Stuart and Mimi Rose Rare Book and Manuscript Exhibition Hall
Tickets Free, registration requested
Walk-up attendees will be accommodated day of, subject to availability.
Join us for a gallery talk with Mandy Cano Villalobos as part of Contemporary Art at the Folger, a rotating series that showcases the work of Folger Artist Fellows.
Mandy Cano Villalobos harnesses the leftover materials of home, belonging, and cultural identity. She creates surprising moments of juxtaposition to draw attention to the lasting legacies of injustice and environmental damage that are a consequence of early modern colonization and empire building.
During the gallery talk, Cano Villalobos will discuss her mixed-media textiles, which take inspiration from the luxurious designs of embroidered bindings in the Folger collection and re-create them with the relics of modern capitalist excess.
About the artist
Mandy Cano Villalobos
Mandy Cano Villalobos is an interdisciplinary artist whose work spans installation, 2D, performance, and sculpture. Her projects explore ideas of home, belonging and cultural identity. Self-dubbed a “cultural scrapper”, the artist harnesses material memories of domestic objects – broken jewelry, orphaned toys, stained clothing, etc. – to craft opulent works steeped in human touch. Each project spawns from a union of religious pageantry and capitalist glut, flaunting a false abundance that eludes our desires for true satisfaction.
Cano Villalobos exhibits internationally and has received multiple awards and grants from organizations including the Gottlieb, Puffin, and Chenven Foundations, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, ArtNews, The Washington Post, Sculpture Magazine, Hyperallergic, and The Chicago Reader, among others. She currently maintains studios in Grand Rapids, MI and Brooklyn, NY.
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Shakespeare and the Environment, with Todd Andrew Borlik
Todd Andrew Borlik’s book explores the ways that the ecological concerns of Jacobean England appear in Shakespeare’s plays.
On View: Mandy Cano Villalobos
About Folger Institute
The Folger Institute is a center for early modern research at the Folger Shakespeare Library that brings public audiences together with researchers to explore the cultures and legacies of the early modern world. Learn more.