Hilcia Peña is a Cuban and Mexican architect and creative currently based in Chiang Mai. Her multidisciplinary practice bridges architecture, design, and storytelling, creating immersive and meaningful experiences. She will present her artwork “Threads of Identities” as part of the Evolving Identities programme at Studio 88 in May 2026.
Hilcia spent nearly two decades designing immersive environments, shaping architectural narratives while working with Walt Disney Imagineering and living abroad in Shanghai and Hong Kong. During those years, she quietly documented everyday life through photography; faces, places, and fleeting street moments that would later guide her artistic path.
After stepping away from that professional world, she returned to explore her own creative voice. Her multidisciplinary practice spans mixed media, photography, watercolor, and hand sketching, grounded in her architectural career in composition, light, and space. Now based in Chiang Mai, she finds deep resonance in the region’s textiles and cultural traditions, which echo her Cuban and Mexican roots. In her latest series, Threads of Identity”, she captures portraits and interlaces them with local textiles and washes of watercolor, forming compositions that feel both present and enduring, an invitation to reflect on the humanity woven through daily life.
Threads of Identity
Threads of Identity brings together nine portraits rooted in the daily rhythms of the Chiang Mai region. Each work reflects encounters with the people, celebrations, and ordinary moments that define life in Northern Thailand. Several pieces portray members of the Lahu tribe during New Year festivities, where embroidered garments and ceremonial adornment become living archives of heritage.
Another captures the atmosphere of the annual Bo Sang Umbrella Festival, where painted umbrellas, movement, and sunlight create a kaleidoscope of color and pattern.
Other works emerge from local markets and neighborhood shops, fleeting exchanges, watchful expressions, and the choreography of everyday trade.
Textile, gestures, and environment play central roles throughout the series. Fabric folds echo surrounding landscapes; saturated hues draw attention to cultural memory embedded in dress and craft. The portraits invite viewers to slow down and notice details, a hand mid-motion, the weight of ceremonial cloth, the quiet dignity of a vendor behind a table of goods.
Together, the works form a visual tapestry of place. They highlight continuity between celebration and routine, tradition and modern life, revealing how identity is expressed not only in grand rituals but in the subtle poetry of ordinary days.
More about Hilcia Peña on her Instagram.
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