Current

Precious Twin

Celebraciones / Actualization for Puppies / precious things that break

Curator, Nuestro Hogar

"For about a year I have wanted to curate a show investigating concepts of creating and recreating home space with artists who have complex American histories and identities. In my own practice I've been thinking a lot about how our first curators, our first museums, are the homes most often decorated by our mothers and grandmothers. For me, those spaces were filled with vestiges of Mexico that over generations became more and more American in both culture and aesthetics. When I recreate home space as a third generation Mexican-American what items am I choosing? When I think back into my memory what stands out? What land do I truly inhabit in my own home?

I posed these same questions to two artists who have similar backgrounds and histories to calling the United States their home, Francis Almendárez and Ana Fernandez. Almendárez' family is originally from El Salvador but lived in Honduras before coming to Los Angeles. Fernandez' family is originally from Mexico and she grew up in Corpus Christi, Texas, where I also grew up. Nuestro Hogar allows these two artists to delve into their past and recreate a domestically inspired present without boundaries. Unlike the gallery white cube, Jonathan Hopson is a 1914 Arts and Crafts bungalow--distinctly American, distinctly a home. For me, this reclaiming of a distinctly early American architectural space in the hands of two Latinx artists is very important. It allows for a representation of Latin history to be retold in Texas--filing a space that would have never been given.

The result is an intimate and in depth conversation that is at once is very personal and universal. The documentation of these two artists' histories are distinctly American and contain immense complexity, validity, and strength. What results is an understanding of the vastness of "American", Latin American, and United States identity in context to Latin American immigration. This exhibit acts as an anthropological doorway to understand histories that are often misunderstood if not completely overlooked. Nuestro Hogar is our home echoing far beyond ourselves."

Press
Houston Chronicle, Molly Glentzer
Glasstire, Lauren Moya Ford

There is a vine that grown on my mouth / Hay una vid que crece en mi boca