We’re looking forward to introducing you to Fernanda Uribe – Horta. Check out our conversation below.
Fernanda, it’s always a pleasure to learn from you and your journey. Let’s start with a bit of a warmup: What do the first 90 minutes of your day look like?
Wake up, cuddle with Toulouse, my french bull dog and we sit together for our morning meditation (he snoozes some more). After that, a bit of yoga, then I make a green juice while I catch up on emails and then go out for our morning stroll at the park.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
My name is Fernanda Uribe-Horta, and I’m a Mexican-Cuban visual artist based in Brooklyn, New York. My work lives at the intersection of art, design, and material poetry — I create sculptural and mixed-media pieces that explore identity, transformation, and the intimate dialogue between the body and nature.
I work with clay, pigments, found objects, and organic materials that carry traces of time and life — elements that decay, morph, or reveal beauty through change. My process is slow and meditative, inspired by movement practices like dance and yoga, and by the metamorphosis that happens in nature. I see my work as a visual journal that connects ancient stories and contemporary emotions, honoring craft while celebrating impermanence.
I opened my studio and showroom in Brooklyn in 2021, a space where I create, exhibit, and connect directly with my community through weekly creative workshops. Through my pieces, I hope to invite reflection — on how we live, what we value, and how beauty can be found in transformation and vulnerability.
Thanks for sharing that. Would love to go back in time and hear about how your past might have impacted who you are today. Who taught you the most about work?
There is a Buddhist saying that the teacher appears when the student is ready. Throughout my journey, I’ve had many teachers, but one in particular has been a constant presence since my college years in Italy. Part magical creature, part shaman, part mirror — and largely a mystery I’m still trying to understand — he has, through his actions, extraordinary paintings, dreams, books, and teachings, guided me to see my work as a poetic dialogue with the earth.
With a Jungian preference in philosophy, his questioning and reasoning have always led me inward, allowing me to uncover answers that only my heart truly knows. I often turn to him, in both the highs and lows of life. With patience and quiet example, he has helped me navigate the darker passages — those moments when art seems to falter under the weight of economic struggle or doubt. His perspective and hopeful words never fail to reach a hidden part of me, rekindling the glimmer of faith that keeps me creating, exploring, and feeling.
What did suffering teach you that success never could?
Suffering is like a personal Japanese martial arts sensei — strict, succinct, and sharp as a sword. It knows your deepest weaknesses and darkest shadows. At first, it may seem like a great disadvantage, even an enemy, but in time, it’s revealed as one of the greatest teachers.
It pushes you to confront what you most resist, carving away fear until only truth remains. In that confrontation, suffering transforms into an opportunity for growth, resilience, and sparks creativity.
In moments of grief, pain or loss, creation becomes an act of survival. Those experiences have taught me humility, compassion, and resilience — the understanding that beauty often grows from what is broken. Success can celebrate what has already bloomed, but suffering reminds me of the soil — dark matter, the invisible that lives underneath, the fertile, and alive — from which everything begins again.
Alright, so if you are open to it, let’s explore some philosophical questions that touch on your values and worldview. What do you believe is true but cannot prove?
I believe that everything — every object, being, and element — carries an energy imprint, a kind of historical energetic memory. I can’t prove it, but I feel it deeply when I hold an object, touch the earth, in hand written note, a dinner prepared with devotion or when I shape clay with my hands. There’s a vibration that connects us all — the living, the decaying, and even the inanimate. Its in the temperature of the objects, the color, the smell, the surface tactility … it speaks of other lives.
I believe materials remember the touch, the intention, the emotion we infuse into them. In that way, creation becomes a form of communication beyond language — an invisible thread that ties us to each other, to the past, and to what’s yet to come.
Before we go, we’d love to hear your thoughts on some longer-run, legacy type questions. If immortality were real, what would you build?
This question reminds me of the extraordinary gardens built in Xilitla, Mexico, by the genius Sir Edward James. He spent his life creating an orchid garden in the jungle of San Luis Potosí, shaping it into an architectural masterpiece. He intended it to be abandoned and rediscovered in the future, so that people might question its origins — perhaps imagining it as the work of a mysterious, unknown Mexican tribe.
To build something immortal is a profound endeavor, and if I had the chance, I would invest in a project that honors nature. It is resilient, wise, and far more enduring than we are. I would create a space that demonstrates growth, decay, and transformation over time — living sculptures, gardens, and environments that shift with the seasons, the weather, and the passage of years.
It would be a place where people could wander, reflect, and witness the delicate balance between permanence and impermanence. I would build not to be remembered, but to observe life unfolding endlessly — a meditation on growth, decay, and renewal. In this way, I would make art that lives alongside time, rather than against it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.fernandauribe.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fernanda___uribe/?hl=en
Image Credits
photos by Gabriel Flores
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