Abigail Villarroel (he/they) is a Venezuelan-born, Birmingham-based artist, writer and facilitator. Their interdisciplinary practice is currently focused on reconnecting with Venezuelan culture through the creation of a queer diasporic canon, most recently through La Vaca Mariposa or The Butterfly Cow. This trans-temporal, shapeshifting creature of mischief becomes a vessel through which Abigail explores Venezuelan lore and history: from independence figures such as Simón Bolívar and Francisco de Miranda, to the country’s fixation with pageantry and Miss Universe, to Indigenous cultures and pre-Columbian relationships to queerness, including the Warao tribe’s two-spirit tidawina.

Abigail does not define their work through a single medium, instead working intuitively across materials to find the form that best serves each story or concept. Their daily practice centres painting, drawing and writing, but their wider body of work has also spanned screenprinting, risograph, sculpture, weaving, installation, performance, poetry, song, costume and photography.

This expansive approach seeks out visual and material languages capable of holding both the disorientation and the freedom of queer immigrant life. Rooted in symbolism and storytelling, Abigail’s work moves between intimate reflections on family, faith and inheritance, and broader acts of world-building that draw from Venezuelan folklore, American cartoons and the Japanese anime they grew up with.

Alongside their studio practice, Abigail is deeply engaged in community arts and facilitation across Birmingham, the Black Country, and the wider Midlands. Their work has been exhibited and developed through programmes and commissions with organisations including Ort Gallery, Craftspace, Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Multistory, Solihull Council and Worcester City Pride.

At the heart of Abigail’s practice is a desire to make work that is sensuous, thoughtful and resonant: work that allows tenderness, theatricality and cultural memory to coexist.