The Mexican-American civil rights movement has deep roots in San Antonio, and Chicano art and culture is at the heart of the city.
A new art exhibition in Contemporary at Blue Star presents the art that the Movement.
Xicanax: Dreamer + Changemaker | Soñadores + Creadores del cambio was created from 2022 to 2023 at the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia.
Nearly three dozen artists from across the country and San Antonio contributed to this colorful and defiant exhibition.
Jacqueline Saragoza McGilvray, curator and exhibition director at the Contemporary, said the exhibition focuses on five themes – neighborhood, borderlands, activism, home and identity.
“It takes a more anthropological approach to looking at Xicanx culture. And so San Antonio is of course strongly represented.”
Calaveras – skulls or skeletons – are a recurring theme in many works of art, including the artist’s diptych Roberto Jose Gonzalez.
Gonzalez says his pieces, El Paso, 03.08.19 And No hate, no fearwere inspired by the 2019 Walmart shooting in El Paso.
“The attack was based on hunting Mexicans, as the shooter described it. I wanted to represent that somehow, because it seems like whenever shootings happen, they get forgotten – because there are so many shootings these days,” he said. “The people get forgotten. The victims get forgotten. And I wanted to think of them.”
Another work by the artist and graphic designer Luis Valderas, called The horizonis an ode to the experiences of immigrants.
“I wanted to make a comment on this current xenophobia,” he said. “I did that in 2007 and we still have to grapple with the same issues of immigration, borders and identity and make sure we have compassion for our fellow human beings.”
The name of the exhibition, Xicanaxis inspired by Nahuatl and its frequent use of the letter X. This letter is now frequently used in the Movimiento to liberate gender from a gendered language.
The artist Debora Kuetzpal Vasquez from San Antonio, who contributed her painting to the exhibition, Citlali: Whenever we are healthyor Citlali: When we were healthy – said the letter had had a significant impact on herself.
“We are fighting against this erasure,” she said. “I am a lesbian and I am genderfluid, and ‘Chicanx’ encompasses all parts of me.”
Xicanax is on view at the Contemporary at Blue Star in San Antonio through October 6.
TPR’s Norma Martinez will moderate a panel discussion on August 24 with artists sharing their views on the letter X at the Contemporary during the Xicanx Symposium“Solve for X.”
Register for the Xicanx Symposium Here.
Watch a video of the exhibition below:
Art featured in the Xicanx exhibition
