Marfa sits on the crossroads of US-90 and US-67 within the expansive Chihuahua Desert of far West Texas. About 60 miles from Mexico, U.S. Border Patrol vehicles are a standard sight alongside the roads, along with an unmissable, otherworldly tethered surveillance blimp that hovers close to the freeway between the city heart and certainly one of its most iconic installations, Elmgreen & Dragset’s “Prada Marfa.”
As the present administration’s immigration coverage has taken impact, the politics of id and geography have once more been thrust entrance and heart—typically violently. On this distant borderland, the place the one-stoplight-town has been redefined by influential artwork world personalities for a number of a long time in an idiosyncratic convergence of concepts and life, there’s a distinctive alternative to interact with themes of neighborhood, narrative, socio-economic realities, and a way of place.
Ballroom Marfa’s summer time exhibition, Los Encuentros, gathers the work of Latinx artists Justin Favela, Ozzie Juarez, Antonio Lechuga, Narsiso Martinez, and Yvette Mayorga. The gallery describes an intention of the present, the title of which interprets to “the meetings” or “the gatherings,” as “the representation of Latinx culture to confront the accessibility of art spaces, colonial art histories, the conditions of labor, and lived experience.”
Amid each day information reviews of ICE raids across the nation, the work in Los Encuentros is a well timed and provocative exploration of at this time’s societal complexities together with being a manner of “responding to the experiences of the people and places they engage with and depict,” an announcement says.
All of the artists make use of a variety of supplies and strategies, from Mayorga’s frosting-like, piped paint to Favela’s vibrant ruffled paper installations redolent of piñatas. Lechuga makes use of Mexican blankets, or cobijas, creating sewn textile collages that discover a variety of experiences and views amid the present political local weather.
Martinez continues to create intimate, candid portraits of farm staff through the use of produce packing containers, luggage, and repurposed plastic as his substrates as a reminder of the usually invisible labor that goes into placing meals on People’ tables. And Juarez has fully reworked Ballroom’s facade in to an enormous portray derived from historic Mesoamerican motifs.
Los Encuentros is curated by Texas-based Maggie Adler, who expressed delight at with the ability to collaborate “with artists whose practices center on allowing a broad range of community members to see themselves represented in art spaces.”
The present continues by way of October 12. Discover extra on the gallery’s web site. And through open hours, maintain a watch out for Rachel Hayes’ colourful patchwork flag that flies out entrance.
