Born in Mexico City, Laura Anderson Barbata is based in New York and Mexico City. Since 1992 she has worked primarily in the social realm, and has initiated projects in the Venezuelan Amazon, Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, Norway, and the United States that address social justice and the environment. Her work often combines performance, procession, dance, music, textile arts, costuming, papermaking, zines and protest. Among them is her ongoing project La Historia de Julia Pastrana, begun in 2005, which resulted in the removal of Pastrana’s body from the Schreiner Collection in Oslo and her repatriation and burial in Sinaloa, Mexico, Pastrana’s birth state. Supported by the National Fund for Culture and Arts, FONCA, Mexico (2014-2017). Her work is in various collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; el Museo de Arte Moderno, México D.F.; Landesbank Baden-Württemberg Gallery, Stuttgart, Germany; Fundación Cisneros; Museo Carrillo Gil, México; and Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary. Anderson Barbata has been Miembro del Sistema Nacional de Creadores, FONCA, México (1999-2017) and professor at the Escuela Nacional de Escultura, Pintura y Grabado La Esmeralda of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (2010-2015). Recipient of the Anonymous Was a Woman 2016 Award and the Mario Trujillo García 2017 Award for Defense of Human Rights, Instituto de Administración Pública de Tabasco,  Mexico;  Honorary Fellow of LACIS (Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian Studies Program), University of Wisconsin, Madison; and fellow of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary TBA21 The Current program.  In 2019 she was awarded The Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency.