Reflection and Renewal: Chican(x)Futurism in 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.