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Sophia del Rio
Artist


 About  Portfolio CV  

Upcoming Solo Show


Prix Fixe

Jan 4th - Feb 28th, 2026

Haggard Library
Plano, TX


Exhibition Statement:

Prix Fixe is the result of artist Sophia del Rio's experience working as a waitress during and after the 2020 pandemic. She was compelled to document the experience and that of her co-workers. 'Prix Fixe' is a fine-dining menu term that translates to "pre-fixed prices and availability," and in the context of this exhibition, speaks to the hard-lined destiny of restaurant industry workers' limited options.

This artistic body of work started outside the galleries as a social work called "100 Plates." The immersive art event took the form of a dinner party, and hosted a group of 12 restaurant workers from different Fort Worth restaurants to discuss wage and labor issues. The work has since expanded to include a series of paintings of beautiful restaurant dining rooms that reveal how difficult these elegant places are to scrutinize. The drab-colored Commemorative Plates series provide contrasting scenes of the hard-working kitchen staff, waitresses and bartenders of the modern restaurant.

The service workers in all over Texas face many of the same injustices as those highlighted by the North Texas stories in the exhibition. The restaurant industry lobby is pushing it’s agenda to expand the same tipping-based wage system, and undocumented and marginalized workers throughout the United States. As workers continue to struggle under low pay, unstable hours, and lack of safety nets. The exhibition humanizes the workers in our local communities and restaurants, recognizes shared patterns of systemic neglect and labor practices, while encouraging discussion of fairer conditions.

Artist’s Self-Portrait

ABOUT


Sophia del Rio born in 1982 in Austin, TX, watched the idealistic hippie generation of her parents sell-out and trade-in civil rights for profit. She set out like many people in her generation to attend an enormous amount of college, achieving a Masters Degree in Neuroscience. However the 2008 financial crash turned the job market into a hollow landscape of unpaid internships, crippling gig-economy work or corporate contract work. The second blow was yet to come and resulted from the 2020 pandemic sending her generation into a spiral uncertainty. The job security her parents had enjoyed was gone.

Sophia's art work is a social practice focused on her generation's precarious future, and attempts to address her generation's need for its own artistic documentation of experience in lasting, slow media, like painting and ceramics. She believes in the power of handmade objects that last, and studied at world-class craft schools; The Southwestern School of Art, Mesa Art Center, and Anderson Ranch, as well as studied at Tamarind Institutes' Summer Workshop.

Unlike her contemporaries who largely focus on individualism, she remains dedicated to stoking the fire of universalism and collective bargaining. In her own life, outside of the studio, she has led a tenants' group of 1,000 families, conducted petitions directed at local politicians, and equity firm landlords.  Her upcoming body of work focuses on the global corporate landscape, its gaslighting techniques and virtual zoom-rooms that separate us from our humanity.


EMAIL


Sophia del Rio
Artist CV
      
SOLO AND DUAL ARTIST EXHIBITIONS
2026 Ruth Andres Gallery, Conversation: Part 1. Dallas, TX
2026 Jaycee Art Center, Dirty Dishes, Irving, TX  - Canceled due to Political Censorship
2026 Haggardy Library Gallery, Prixe Fixe. Plano, TX
2025 Positive Space, Mise en Place. Tulsa, OK
2023 Arts Fort Worth Gallery, Lust and Suicide. Fort Worth, TX
2023 Near South Side Container, Art South, On the quiet take. Fort Worth, TX
2022 Goldmark Arts Center, John H Milde Gallery, Waiting for the fire to start. Dallas, TX
2018 Goldmark Arts Center, John H Milde Gallery, Susan Shiels Johnson and Sophia del Rio: Echo. Dallas, TX
2018 Lincoln Mill Arts Gallery, Summer Circumventing Time. Huntsville, AL

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2025 Independent Curatorial Project: H.O.M.E., The Present is Dark, the Future is Practice. James Harris Gallery, Dallas, TX
2024 Texas Biennial, The Silos at Sawyer Yards, Self Titled – God is under the Rubble, No 2. Houston, TX
2023 Arts Fort Worth, Further Fringe, Fort Worth, TX
2023 Kick Pigeon, Harbor Freight, Fort Worth, TX
2023 RTown Gallery, Yeehaw, Grapevine, TX
2023 FWADA Spring Gallery Night, The Pool Near Southside Gallery, Fort Worth, TX
2022 RTown Gallery, Black and White, Grapevine, TX
2021 East | West Galleries, John Weinkein Student Exhibition, Texas Woman’s University Denton, TX
2019  Xico Gallery, Intercambio Cultural, Phoenix, AZ
2016  Portal Gallery, Deep South and Down Under, Atlanta, GA
2016  John L Santikos Gallery, All School Exhibition, Southwest School of Art, San Antonio, TX
2016  Wharepuke Gallery, Leftovers, Kerikeri, New Zealand
2016  Highwire Gallery, Eclectic Collective, San Antonio, TX
2015 Lions Field Gallery, Art on Broadway, San Antonio, TX
2015  John L Santikos Gallery, All School Exhibition, Southwest School of Art, San Antonio, TX

PRESS
Alicia Chesser “What’s the State of Art in Tulsa Right Now? Artists are Responding to a Political Nightmare.” The Pickup, January 15, 2026

Alicia Chesser “Like the Reastaurant Workers she Portrays, Sophia del Rio’s “Mise en Place” Accomplishes a Lot with a Little, the show at Positive Space is an reflection - and indictment- of the restaurant industry.” The Pickup, October 23, 2026

COLLECTIONS
Brooklyn Art Library, Brooklyn, NY.
Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe, AZ. Educational and Curatorial Print Department.
CARGO 2018 / TOOLS FOR THE WEB  /  LOS ANGELES CALIFORNIA 90039