Reflection and Renewal: Chican(x)Futurism in Texas

Statement: The Uncolonized: Axihuical explores a parallel world, where the Western Hemisphere averted colonization, and the indigenous people of the lands thrived unobstructed. This universe is a utopia of bountiful wonders where Aztechnonauts explore the heavens, Mayathmaticians unlock secrets of the universe, Olmchemists create new polymers, and Zapotecknical engineers build the architecture of the future. This body of work celebrates the indigenous heritage of people like me and is intended to invoke curiosity into the untaught histories of our Mesoamerican legacy.

Growing up, I was taught to take pride in my Mexican heritage. My family proudly traced back their Spanish lineage, but our indigenous half was vaguely known. This missing part of my ancestry has led me to the discovery of my culturally rich lineage, which includes the Rarámuri people of Chihuahua, Mexico, and the highly sophisticated and technologically advanced ancient societies of Mesoamerica. From the vulcanization of rubber by the Olmecs to the astronomy and mathematics of the Mayas, and the architectural wonders of the Mexica, there was so much to learn and be proud of. Through a Sci-Fi-inspired vision, I aim to inspire others to research their own affluent heritages and fully embrace their complex ancestry.

Biography: Angel Cabrales is a multimedia artist and arts educator based in El Paso, Texas. His work examines aspects of Latinx identity, immigration, inequality and histories, a part of American culture that is misconstrued because of political and media rhetoric. Cabrales views everything as a potential artistic resource providing him with a flexibility to utilize a variety of mediums and styles. He merges media with intangible elements, such as his upbringing within the storied scientific history of New Mexico and political realities of the Texas borderlands. The creation and engineering in his work creates an interactive experience that merges art with new technologies and the socio-political concerns of today.

Cabrales holds a MFA at the University of North Texas and a BFA at Arizona State University. Cabrales is part of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum's Estrellas y Cuentas initiative on Latinx Futurism. He is also a member of the International Sculpture Center, the Texas Sculpture Group, and the JUNTOS art collective, and has exhibited his work in numerous galleries and museums across the country. Cabrales teaches Sculpture at UTEP, including courses that bring together art concepts and STEAM elements. He is head of the Engineering + Art + Science = Social Impact (EASSI) team, which focuses on community-engagement projects in the Borderlands of El Paso.

Statement: My work is expressed through a variety of media, including drawing, sculpture, and mix-media installation. I represent and imagine nature, its complexity and simplicity, often using non-linear time. The concepts explored are often invented organisms, spaces, and environments that are based on our present reality and coexistence with the natural world. My work is vibrant and colorful. It tends to allude to futurism, science, and imagination.

Environmental concerns surrounding the Rio Grande Valley inspire my work, as specific places and times are impacted by the policies enacted by México and the U.S. I question the meaning behind these national borders as opposed to the natural boundaries that exist from one eco-region to another. I highlight the ecological issues that are inevitably intertwined with social matters, focusing on over fifteen hundred divided organisms along the Mexico-U.S border, affecting everything from monarch butterflies to human beings. Additionally, my work is related to the politicization of the border wall, including prototypes for “the beautiful border wall” from c. 2017, that pose non-realistic solutions and demonstrate a misinterpretation of the current state and future of la frontera.

Biography: Yareth Fernández González is a mixed-media artist and arts educator based in Austin, Texas. Their work experiments with artificial environments and futurist ways of interacting with nature through site specific installation work that respond to various landscapes, including the Mexico-U.S. border. They investigate different solutions for possible environmental extinctions, often creating spaces that reflect non-linear time, invented organisms, systems of growing, and geometrical frameworks. Their vibrant and colorful installations provoke ways to rethink how we coexist with the natural world through art, science, and imagination.

Born in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, México, they hold a MFA at Michigan State University and a BA in Art at The University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College. Their work is expressed through a variety of mediums such as drawing, mixed media sculptures, and installation work. Fernández González has created temporary and permanent public art for the City of Austin. They have held a solo exhibition at the Sam Z. Coronado Gallery at Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center and their work has been featured twice in the annual Emerging Latinx Artist (YLA) exhibition at Mexic-Arte Museum.

Statement: Through art I focus on clearing the distorted mirror of our militarized South Texas border region by exposing the history, racial scripts, and false narratives that have warped our perspective of self and place. My work, Nuestra Delta Magica (Our Magic Delta), deconstructs the collectively false narrative we have heard since our adolescence of the South Texas border, that “there is nothing here.” This installation unpacks this harmful narrative as a way to justify environmental destruction and U.S imperial expansion with the establishments of SpaceX’s rocket testing sites and settlements of a natural gas refinery and pipeline (LNG), all within six miles from each other on the Mexico-U.S border.

As an artist and illustrator from South Texas, I am driven by social change. My activism is informed by the beauty and violence that is addressed while envisioning change for a better future. This project includes books and articles on the histories of South Texas curated by the Radical Library based in Brownsville co-led by trans artist Xandra Treviño. Through this work, I reclaim the Rio Grande Valley as a delta, one that honors the river as a space of learning and unlearning, of healing historical amnesia, and a space of liberation and joy.

Biography: Nansi Guevara is a rasquache artist, designer, author, and educator based in Brownsville, Texas. Originally from Laredo, Texas, she has spent most of her life living near the Rio Grande River. Her artistic practice is driven by activism and social change through exposing untold histories of violence, criminalization, migration, and forced labor in South Texas. Through narrative change and cultural organizing, Guevara creates spaces of resistance and affirmation, encouraging creative economies centered on community cultural wealth.

Guevara holds a Master’s in Education from Harvard University and a BFA in Design from The University of Texas at Austin. She runs her own freelance illustration and education practice, Corazón Contento, based out of Brownsville, Texas. Guevara has been awarded residencies, fellowships, and grants from Fulbright, the NEA, Artplace America, a Blade of Grass, NALAC, the Santa Fe Art Institute, and the AWAW Environmental Art Grant. Her work has been community centered and driven by social change for the past 15 years in Austin, Mexico City, Boston, Massachusetts, and now Laredo and Brownsville, Texas.

Statement: I am a multidisciplinary artist from the frontera. My process is informed by my experience growing up in a family owned and operated flower and ceramic shop. My involvement in all aspects of fabrication, production, distribution taught me to use the mediums needed to contribute to cultural practices in my community. Collaboration with others is a long held aspect of my practice. With my peers from the community, I’ve produced many installations that elicit audience engagement.

My imagery explores possibilities of decolonization by isolating and rearranging iconic components of realities. Combining ideas in cosmology, Mesoamerican mythology, and my family’s stories, I reframe my experiences of growing up on the frontera to connect with past and present generations, collapsing borders to transform and explore social and cultural ambiguities that exist. I believe that identity, past-present-future, is in constant evolution. The intermingling of cultures in a more tolerant society is the future. Adaptation and transformation require a foot in the past and present, a familiarity with transitions between borders, and a flexibility that is conducive to a re-imagination of realities.

Biography: Luis Valderas is a multi-disciplinary artist and educator based in San Antonio, Texas. The imagery in his artwork is based on Mesoamerican mythology combined with science fiction, cosmosology, and ancestral narratives. Valderas transforms ancient icons by revealing their connection between past, present, and future. His own visual language exists in the “third space of reality,” the frontera where anything is possible. Through mixed-media work, Valderas presents an art experience that prompts spectators to imagine and participate in an intermingled future.

Valderas holds a BFA in Art Education from the UT–Pan American and is co-founder of Project: MASA I, II,III, IV & V. He is also co-founder of The A3 Press and Bishop & Valderas, LLC. and is a mentor and board member for the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA). He has exhibited at the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia (MOA), Medellin Museum of Art, Colombia, the Queens Museum, NYC, and the UCR-Arts Block, Riverside, CA. His work has been featured in numerous scholarly articles and publications dedicated to the research of contemporary Chican@ art.