Who Is Aimee Perez?
Aimee Perez is a Cuban sculptor, living in Miami, whose work explores spirituality, human connection, and the emotional truths that shape our lives. Through expressive figurative sculpture and mixed media, Perez creates powerful archetypal forms that reflect on suffering and redemption, grief and comfort, resilience and transformation.
Born in Havana, Cuba, Perez immigrated to the United States with her family at the age of twelve through the Freedom Flights. She later lived and worked in Mexico before returning to Miami, experiences that exposed her to diverse cultural traditions, spiritual practices, and artistic influences that continue to resonate throughout her work today.
To understand Aimee Perez's work, it helps to begin with the figure.
Again and again, human forms appear throughout her sculptures. They kneel, carry, weave, mourn, nurture, endure, and transform. Yet these figures are rarely portraits of specific individuals. Instead, they function as archetypes, embodying experiences and emotions that transcend any one story.
Las Hilanderas | Aimee Perez
Perez has described her work as both a dialogue with the viewer and a form of self-exploration. Her sculptures invite us to recognize something of ourselves in the figures before us. A mother. A pilgrim. A dreamer. A laborer. A survivor. Through gesture and expression, she transforms personal experience into something universal.
Spirituality is central to this process.
Drawing upon contemporary, religious, and biblical themes, Perez creates works that explore what she calls the paradoxical truths of human existence: suffering and redemption, grief and comfort, fragility and strength. Her sculptures do not offer simple answers. Instead, they acknowledge that opposing truths often exist simultaneously and that meaning is often found in the tension between them.
Lilith Unearthed | Aimee Perez
While clay remains at the heart of her practice, Perez frequently incorporates wax, metal, glass, found objects, fibers, and mixed media elements into her work. These materials bring additional layers of meaning to each piece. Objects that might otherwise be overlooked become vessels for memory, devotion, labor, or transformation. The resulting works feel both ancient and contemporary, personal and collective.
Another important thread running through Perez's work is her fascination with traditional forms of making. Her travels throughout Latin America and her interest in weaving, pottery, and the artisanal practices historically associated with women have informed many of her most compelling projects. In these works, craft becomes more than technique. It becomes a way of preserving knowledge, transmitting culture, and honoring generations whose contributions often go unseen.
Collectors are often drawn to Perez's work because of its emotional immediacy. The sculptures possess a remarkable ability to feel familiar even when their narratives remain open-ended. Viewers may not know the exact story being told, yet they instinctively recognize the emotions being expressed.
That Little Dress | Aimee Perez
This is the power of the archetype.
By moving beyond the specifics of individual biography, Perez creates works that speak across cultures, languages, and experiences. Her sculptures remind us that despite our differences, many of our most profound struggles, hopes, losses, and acts of love are shared.
At a time when much contemporary art emphasizes distance or irony, Aimee Perez remains committed to empathy. Her work invites reflection without judgment, vulnerability without sentimentality, and spirituality without dogma.
Through sculpture, she creates spaces where the deeply personal becomes universal, and where the stories of ordinary people become something enduring.