raul de lara carves surreal sculptures to explore belonging

Raul De Lara Reimagines Tools, Plants, and Furniture in Wood

Through January 11, 2026, the Contemporary Austin hosts the first solo museum exhibition in Texas of sculptor Raul De Lara, an artist known for his highly technical approach to woodworking. De Lara transforms everyday tools, plants, and furniture into anthropomorphic and surreal forms. These works act as vessels of memory, resilience, and humor, but also as pointed reflections on the immigrant experience, queer identity, and the liminal space of DACA status, the temporary US policy that offers young undocumented immigrants protection from deportation and the ability to work legally, though without a path to permanent residency or citizenship.

De Lara’s background roots him in both Mexican and American traditions of making. Trained in Austin and later at Virginia Commonwealth University, he honors traditional woodworking while experimenting with scale, humor, and magical realism. His sculptures range from saints conjured out of branches to furniture reimagined with uncanny detail. ‘Growing up, I would see craftsmen carve these saints out of branches,’ he recalls. ‘I always wonder, like, at what point does the branch become a saint?’ he wonders. That threshold between the ordinary and the sacred, the native and the foreign, and the tool and the symbol is where his work finds its resonance.

Cavale II, 2023 | all images courtesy of Raul De Lara, unless stated otherwise

seven new works on view at the Contemporary Austin exhibition

For the show in Austin, his hometown after immigrating to the US at age twelve, De Lara completes seven new sculptures shaped from mesquite, walnut, cedar, and oak. The pieces reference wildflowers native to both Texas and northern Mexico, such as Damianita, Indian Blanket, and Sleepy Daisy. Their dual botanical origins parallel the artist’s own exploration of cultural hybridity and contested belonging. ‘Why can plants be native to two places, but never people?’ he asks. By embedding this question into wood and form, the New York-based artist turns sculpture into a stage for negotiating identity and precarity.

the sculpture was made for Hermés new Aspen Boutique’s window display

When Woodworking Meets Belonging and Legal Uncertainty

Raul De Lara insists that the act of sharing is central to his practice. ‘Some of the best works are the ones that, when you share yourself, you really get beyond just the object,’ he says. ‘When you can connect with people in that way—thinking that our work can make people feel a sense of care, or want to care—that’s enough.’ In Austin, the newly commissioned sculptures invite audiences to engage with beauty while confronting difficult questions of who gets to belong, how stories are carved into materials, and why plants are allowed a dual nativity denied to people.

The artist himself describes the project as the most complex of his career. ‘Honestly, this show… they’re the most layered, and they have the capacity to fail. Pulling one off is a miracle, and I have, like, six miracles to do,’ he shares. This balance of rigor and risk reflects the precariousness of his legal and social position under DACA. ‘My legal standing here—if the law changed tomorrow, that would be a different exhibition. It’s a reality… I could not even make my own show.’ In these remarks, the material and the political fuse, as woodworking becomes both a technical dance with fire and a metaphor for living in limbo.

these works act as vessels of memory, resilience, and humor

Installation view, HOST: Raul De Lara, The Contemporary Austin – Jones Center on Congress Avenue, Austin, Texas, 2025. Artwork © Raul De Lara | image by Alex Boeschenstein, courtesy of The Contemporary Austin

For Being Left-Handed, 2020

Como Las De Mi Tierra / Like The One’s Back Home, 2024

Hermés Window Installation in Aspen, Colorado, 2023

Soft Chair (M1), 2023

The Wait (Again), 2022

La Monstera, 2023

installation view, HOST: Raul De Lara, The Contemporary Austin – Jones Center on Congress Avenue, Austin, Texas, 2025. Artwork © Raul De Lara | image by Alex Boeschenstein, courtesy of The Contemporary Austin