Remezcla Meets is a video and editorial series that takes audiences inside the studios of groundbreaking creators, documenting their craft and exploring how their upbringing and Latine heritage shape their work. Through intimate conversations and immersive visuals, this series highlights the voices pushing the boundaries of film, art, culture, and identity.
If you’re walking around Miami in your best fit, you might just get consecrated. But beware: in a city that lives to be seen, this artist isn’t looking for the obvious. She’s in search of a special trait that comes from Afro-Caribbean legacy—the kind shaped by inner-city living and embodied in personal style. It’s that fundamental bravado, that tumbao, after all, that has made Kandy G. Lopez’ signature “fiber paintings,” a sought-after presence in galleries across the country.
Lopez received REMEZCLA in a theater shop, now transformed into her artist studio at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where she teaches Art History. She’s surrounded by a textile “altar” of people she’s approached on the street: a laid-back man slouching in a chair in full athleisure, a pañuelo tied over his cap; an Afro-Caribbean Carnival dancer in full, feathery regalia; and a mature woman standing in front of a bookshelf in a posture of defiance. And they look like the coolest guardian angels floating in a space they entirely own.
As Lopez explains her process of portrait-making, she deliberates over whether to use a vibrant red fabric for the woman’s dress, as she meticulously crafts the silhouette of a book on gray yarn over her canvas mesh. She’s as fixated on the meaning of transparency as she is on the nuances of brown.
“Brown is the least favorite color in the crayon box,” says 38-year-old Lopez—articulating a sentiment that echoes through generations. She’s wearing a warm smile and a white T-shirt that reads “Armas para el pueblo.”
Born to Dominican parents in a predominantly white neighborhood in New Jersey, she moved to South Florida when she was still a child. Here, she encountered a more nuanced brand of prejudice and a lifelong struggle to navigate her existence within the shades of brown. That search defines the art of Lopez, a mixed-media portrait maker whose textile depictions propelled her career to gallery stardom.
Lopez calls these creations “fiber paintings”—the larger-than-life, colorful yarn portraits of Afro-Caribbean and Black people that have made her famous. The first, however, began in 2015 as a black-and-white desahogo, a visceral outlet for her grief and frustration following the killings of Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner. The result was a carpet portrait of her now husband, designed to be stepped on—a visible sign of powerlessness. “I wanted to create a piece that was more political because I was teaching at Daytona State College,” she explains, referencing a campus just a 45-minute drive from Sanford, Florida, where Martin was fatally shot.
Lopez had been making portraits of people “who look like me” since college. Back then, she didn’t realize the subversive power of her art—a sensibility akin to Kehinde Wiley or Amy Sherald, known for their distinctive official portraits of the Obamas. Initially, Lopez sought refuge in monochromatic versions of her subjects to avoid the inevitable questions that followed: “Why do you keep painting people of color?” To which she would reply: “Would you ask a white person why are they painting white people?”
It all changed in grad school, where a Cuban professor introduced her to critical theory of bell hooks and the literary weight of Toni Morrison. That gave her the tools—and the confidence—to defend her art and her subjects. Upon graduation, she brought back color and what she identified as “brown tumbao”: that distinct, defiant swagger known to those who navigate the inner cities of Miami, New York or Los Angeles. It sparked a new, essential conversation about the complexity of the brown spectrum.
“I’m obsessed with brown because you can get so many different hues and tones.” As a painter, she used to mix colors to achieve the nuanced skin tones her eyes perceived. When she turned to yarn—partly as a self-imposed technical constraint because she was tired of traditional painting—it brought a new set of challenges. Her technique isn’t defined by traditional stitching or embroidery, but by the instincts of a trained painter.
“I don’t know what I am doing,” she jokes about her yarn “strokes,” yet her process reveals a deep, technical understanding. “I create them like paint. If I want to fill an area faster, I use a thick yarn, double-loop it through the needle, and move in one direction. I think about the stroke. I know the skin is round, which makes it look three-dimensional, so when I’m filling it in, I’m thinking about the way muscles wrap around tendons. I’m obsessed with anatomy.”
This anatomical precision probably explains why her portraits feel so alive. The dimensionality of the textiles and the deliberate direction of her hand give the figures a pulse, as if these “swaggy giants” are about to step out of the frame. She often places a foot outside the canvas boundary—reaching toward the viewer. It is a reversal of the somber nature of her earlier Trayvon Martin-inspired piece. These brown figures have stood up and refuse to be stepped on; instead, they are taking up space and rising assertively into (onto) the viewer’s world.
Kandy’s work has been exhibited across the country, but two milestones remain closest to her heart. The first is (in) visible: pair-a-dice, her 2023 exhibition at the BaCA gallery in Pompano Beach. Featuring stained-glass creations inspired by a residency in Samaná, Dominican Republic, the series explored the dynamics of colorism. She created multicolored, translucent portraits of workers that captured the grandiose effect of light passing through faces—a technique once reserved for religious figures at churches, now reclaimed to honor Afro-Caribbean identity from her parents homeland.
That same year, Lopez was signed by New York’s prestigious ACA Galleries, home to legends like American portrait artists Faith Ringgold and Romare Bearden.
“I still have imposter syndrome that I’m working through with therapy,” she admits lightheartedly as she talks about her 2023 exhibit at the world-class Armory Show in New York. “I was in that space, standing next to pieces by Faith Ringgold, and I just kept thinking: ‘This is wild!’”
And wild it has been. As a child, Lopez moved from school to school due to the instability of Section 8 housing; today, the artist travels the world on her own terms. Her journey keeps accelerating, yet she remains anchored in her purpose. One that she defines through three pillars: “visibility, representation, and community.”
As both artist and professor, she carries a core philosophy: “You have to see yourself in spaces before anyone else can.” Through her work, Kandy G. Lopez has not only stepped into the highest spaces—she has elevated our brown tumbao to exist there, too.