ABOUT
BIO
Cher Musico (she/they) is a queer, autistic Filipinx-American interdisciplinary artist exploring dimensions of home related to identity, domestic labor, and community. Their work intertwines the warmth of nostalgia and culture as a personal homage and exploration of memory. Through a thoughtful blend of materials and methods, Musico weaves personal narrative with cultural memory, crafting works that honor heritage while inviting reflection on the complexities of belonging. Their practice often incorporates textile, mixed media, or photography—each piece functioning as both homage and inquiry, grounded in care and emotional depth.
Musico’s work is deeply rooted in lived experience and shaped by a commitment to creating spaces for connection and visibility. Drawing from her Filipinx-American upbringing and queer identity, her pieces serve as layered explorations of selfhood and collective history.
In addition to her studio practice, Musico plays vital roles behind the scenes in creative production and community organizing. A writer and performer, she has taken the stage in spoken word poetry slams and contributed to the literary community as both a board member of Young DFW Writers and a teaching artist. She is the Technical Director and Operations Manager for the Division of Visual Arts at Texas Woman’s University, where she supports and coordinates artistic programming. She is also the co-founder and executive producer of Mustache Envy Drag and Queerlesque, a performance troupe that centers queer expression and celebration.
Musico holds an AAA in Visual Communication and a BFA in Advertising Design from the Art Institute of Dallas, and an MFA from Texas Woman’s University.
ARTIST STATEMENT
With a Filipina mother and a Caucasian father, my upbringing was a blend of two cultures; a mestiza. These layered identities are shaped in spaces like the kitchen, where I grew up surrounded by titas…aunties and their laughter echoing around shared meals. The scent of garlic, the sound of Taglish, the rhythm of passing plates—these are some of my memories of belonging.
My practice explores figures as a living archive—one that holds memory, culture, labor, and resistance; where domestic rituals become expressions of identity and care, like space as a stage where selfhood is embodied through everyday gestures and gatherings.
Nostalgia, for me, is not about longing for a fixed past, but about honoring the fragments we carry forward—the ones we remake in new forms. My work is an act of remembering, and a refusal to forget. I collect, catalog, and reimagine materials—photographs, textiles, heirlooms—not just as artifacts, but like portraits; investigating how cultural and societal constructs shape our physical and emotional landscapes. Each an echo of someone’s touch, labor, or love, becoming a site where personal and collective memory can surface, shift, and resist.
Whether through photographs, fibers, or performative acts, I return to the question: How do we find ourselves—our truths, our communities—within and through objects of memory or through acts of remembering?
Within my interdisciplinary approach, I treat the body or objects as a keeper of time, trauma, and tenderness. I invite viewers to witness the power of embodied identity and the ways we carry home and history within ourselves. Whether through the soft fold of cloth or the repetition of a gesture, in all my work, I honor the power of embodied memory. Figures are never just a form—it is a carrier of home, of history, and of healing.
Cher Musico