Latinx Art And Life Across Texas Revealed In ‘Soy De Tejas’

Everything’s bigger in Texas as the cliché goes. Even the art exhibitions.

Spreading out across 20,000-square-feet inside San Antonio’s cavernous Centro de Artes Gallery, “Soy de Tejas: A Statewide Survey of Latinx Art” conveys a vision matching the grandeur of its home state. Presenting more than 100 artworks from 40 native Texan and Texas-based contemporary artists, the exhibition attempts–and succeeds–at reflecting the diverse and beautiful complexity of Latinx identities.

That’s no mean feat in Texas where Hispanics make up roughly 40-percent of the population–some 12 million people–a hair larger than the non-Hispanic white population in this gargantuan state, nearly 800 miles at its longest and 800 miles at its widest.

Examined are subjects great–race, class, gender, migration, displacement, indigeneity, labor–and intimate–parental expectations, predatory loans, household repairs. Employing a fascinating diversity of materials from shower curtains to barbed wire and horse saddles, a fascinating diversity of mediums from painting to video, photography, sculpture and rasquache–more on that later–the artists mix humor, sarcasm, parody, tragedy and biting critique in revealing their slice, or chunk, of life for Latinx Tejas.

It is what it is. For better or worse. For better and worse. Simultaneously on the inside and outside of America. Laughing for not crying they often seem to say.

The artworks are huge. The space is huge. The scope is huge, but at no point does “Soy de Tejas” (I’m from Texas) become flabby or distracted; the presentation remains precise despite an enormous grasp.

Thanks for that goes to exhibition curator Rigoberto Luna, a San Antonio native who has worked with Latinx artists statewide for the past decade through his Presa House Gallery. Over that time, Luna has made it a point to explore the far-flung nooks and crannies of Texas for artists often overlooked by the state’s big art exhibitions in its other big cities–places like Corpus Christi and Brownsville.

“I definitely thought big,” Luna told Forbes.com of his curation. “This is a museum scale building and the chances of a museum reaching out asking me to find the best Latinx artists across Texas and putting together that show we’re pretty much a zero, so it was an opportunity to do a show on a museum scale and bring these knockout pieces that rarely leave their hometown.”

Located in the heart of downtown San Antonio’s Zona Cultural on the grounds of Historic Market Square, Centro de Artes is dedicated to telling the story of the Latino experience with a focus on South Texas. The emphasis is on local and regional art, history and culture and showcasing Latino artists and Latino-themed artworks. The space, free and open to the public to visit, hosts an annual open call for exhibitions, taking pitches from local, regional and national curators interested in programming the building.

Luna shot his shot in 2019, getting the green light, then using the next four years assembling the artists and artworks on view in his “dream show,” unprecedented for Latinx art in Texas in both its ambition and execution.

“It’s very rare to have that much space to operate in and the artists met the challenge,” Luna said. “I remember when I first encountered (the artworks on view in ‘Soy de Tejas’) in their home city; they’re enthralling, they demand attention. The thought of being able to bring these massive works to my home city and to these people that may not be familiar with them, I thought that was a huge opportunity.”

Luna made the most of it, managing to tell a vast story in a clear and cohesive manner using largely conceptual artwork which can often be mystifying and impenetrable even to art aficionados. While high on concept, pieces in “Soy de Tejas” never befuddle for the sake of being befuddling as can often be the case with contemporary art on the cutting edge.

The exhibition never loses the plot chasing insider, art world, avant-garde acclaim.

“The Texas experience, or rather being of Latin American descent living in Texas, and what does that feel like,” remains front and center as Luna describes it. “Giving the full spectrum of our experience. Yes, we have to deal with the issues at the border that seem to never end, or issues of gentrification, displacement, climate change, but at the same time, we find ways to stay positive, to keep the joy in our life.”

Music, dancing, food and faith share footing in the show with socio-political concerns.

A stunning achievement.

“The most consequential survey of our state’s Latinx artists in recent memory,” according to Texas-based art publication Glasstire.com.

Rasquache

Among the large totems, large drawings, large photographs and large installations, artworks incorporating the rasquache aesthetic stand out as particularly memorable.

“It’s really just finding an alternative way of problem solving, a make-due situation,” Luna explains of rasquache. “It was a demeaning term, initially, but I think over the years, people have found it to be a sort of ingenuity; within Mexican American communities, we’ll call it Chicano ingenuity.”

Spit and baling wire. Duct tape.

“The fence at your house breaks and you find whatever materials are laying around so you can fix it, or the latch on the door breaks and you use a water hose to keep it together,” Luna gives as rasquache examples beyond art. “It’s saving money, saving time, finding the quickest solution, and I think the reason that so many of the artists in the show exemplify that is many of them grew up with the same kind of backgrounds–humble, blue collar backgrounds–and for them now as artists, they’re finding new ways of reimagining material and utilizing it in sculptural capacities.”

Batteries, bungy cords, tarping, fluorescent tube lights, a transistor radio.

“It’s very effective. It’s a fresh way of looking at things,” Luna said. “It’s a turning away of the higher end materials that you’ll see in museums, but with the same philosophies. It’s sort of a lexicon, a Chicano vernacular that’s happening in South Texas, but I know that it happens across the globe.”

Go to the American South and you’ll find rasquache. A ranch out West. Africa. Anywhere where people have to make more from less.

And here’s betting you’ll be finding rasquache in art museums around America before you know it, the work so clearly in the lineage of Robert Rauschenberg’s assemblages, Louise Nevelson’s sculptures, Thornton Dial. In fact, you already do, just under other names from artists such as Nari Ward and Lonnie Holley. “Found object art.” “Folk art.”

“A glimpse at the issues we’re facing here in the state, also to the creative ways in which these artists are able to communicate those things,” Luna sums up “Soy de Tejas” on view through July 2, 2023. “If you’re not familiar with Latinx contemporary art, what it really looks like, this is a good introduction to the creativeness of so many of these artists working across the state.”