Outer Terrains | Nabil Gonzalez, Jenelle Esparza, Veronica Anne Salinas, Celeste De Luna
BOX 13 ArtSpace is pleased to present Outer Terrains – an exhibition curated by Tere Garcia and Victoria Paige Gonzalez, in conjunction with Spring of Latino Art. The exhibition opens with a curator led tour at 6PM followed by an opening reception on Saturday, February 23, from 7 – 9PM.
Outer Terrains presents a sensory experience of the sights and sounds of the U.S./Mexico borderscape. The exhibiting artists, engaging their relationship with the Texas border landscape, reveal what’s beyond the mirage from Texas’ blistering sun by shining light on the complex issues of where they call home. Nabil Gonzalez uses historical printmaking processes as she negotiates the past/present with unsolved, disturbing murders and disappearance of women surrounding El Paso, TX and Juarez, Mexico for the last 13 years. Jenelle Esparza elaborates on her work that explores the interconnected histories of South Texas cotton fields. Celeste De Luna’s work is a tool to understand and deconstruct oppressive paradigms within the physical, spiritual, and psychic environment. Veronica Anne Salinas uses tape loops to investigate sound frequencies at the border.
The exhibitions continue through April 13, 2019. An Opening Reception will be held on Saturday, February 23, 2019, from 7 – 9PM at BOX 13 ArtSpace, 6700 Harrisburg, Houston, TX 77011.
Nabil Gonzalez earned her Master of Fine arts degree at the Rhode Island School of Design, and she has recently returned to her hometown of El Paso, TX to teach at the University of Texas at El Paso, where she completed her BFA. While she works across studio media including digital platforms, Gonzalez focuses her practice on printmaking, with a particular emphasis on monotype and lithographic works on paper.
An interview with Nabil Gonzalez on Strange Fire and an Anderson Ranch residency interview.
Jenelle Esparza is interested in the historical anecdotes of South Texas, her newest body of work focuses on cotton production and the predominantly Latino labor force in cotton manufacturing along the US/Mexico border. As a native of South Texas, with intergenerational ties to the picking fields, Esparza’s family is directly linked to this history. Through the use of photography and sculpture she cultivates a conceptual documentation of the agricultural history of cotton. The exhibition aims to serve [within the borderlands] as an educational tool in understanding the social, economic, civil, and feminist lineage that was formed by cotton.
Celeste De Luna’s work is a tool to understand and deconstruct oppressive paradigms in her physical/spiritual/psychic environment. She explores the complexity of relationships of borderland people and landscape. Common themes in her work include migrant/border experiences of women, children, families, Tejas landscape, the spiritual struggle of conflicting identities, and “survivor’s guilt”. Common iconography frequently features razor wire, fences, bridges, and anchor babies. “By mapping geopolitical aspects of my environment, I understand myself better. Post-911 militarization of my homeland and has been the catalyst of ‘conocimiento’ for me, a concept written about by Xicana lesbian thinker Gloria Anzaldua.”
Veronica Anne Salinas is an intermedia artist that explores soundscapes, performance, improvisation, installation, field recordings, electronics, and writing with themes of feminist and Latina identity, ritual, mysticism, landscape/cityscape, vocal manipulation and fairy tales. Her sound work has been featured at Gallery E.V.A (SATX), Highwire Gallery (SATX), Clamplight Studios (SATX), ArtLeague Houston (HTX), Midtown Arts and Theatre Center (HTX), Lawndale Art Center (HTX), Alabama Song (HTX), Megapolis Audio Festival (Philadelphia, PA), Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT) and Cities and Memory (UK). She is currently living in Chicago to pursue her MFA in Sound at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
CURATORS
Victoria Paige Gonzalez is a cultural producer dividing her time between Texas and Colorado. Her work includes advocating to build inclusive artistic communities. Currently, Gonzalez is the Digital Strategist for the Latino Cultural Arts Center (Denver, CO)–an interdisciplinary art complex that will strengthen the knowledge of and appreciation for the extensive artistic expressions of Latinxs by preserving and highlighting the history and ongoing contributions. During the fall of 2018, she was selected to attend The Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF) Emerging Leaders of Color Conference–a regional non-profit arts service organization dedicated to the creative advancement and preservation of the arts. She is also the former PR/Marketing Coordinator at Museo de las Americas, the premier Latin American art museum of the Rocky Mountain Region. She is a fifth generation Tejanx who graduated from the University of Houston with a BFA in Photography and Digital Media, with a minor in Interdisciplinary Art. She now lives in Denver, CO.
Tere Garcia is originally from Monterrey, Nuevo Leon. Mexico. She graduated from the University of Houston with a BFA in Photography and Digital Media and is currently pursuing her MFA in Photography at Parsons the New School for Design in New York City. Garcia works in a variety of media such as video, sculpture, installation, traditional and digital photography. Her work employs conceptual and performative tactics to intervene in the photographic processes of cognition and to question the image as the repository of meaning. Her work intervenes in the image-making process in order to destabilize the ground upon which it rests. “I aim to complicate the textuality of an image, how it is read, by exposing and complicating the space it seeks to naturalize.” She has exhibited at The Houston Center for Photography, Blaffer Art Museum, Box 13 ArtSpace, HCC Central Fine Art Gallery, Fotofest participating spaces, Rudolph Blume Fine Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA and New York, NY.
