The Mexican American civil rights movement has deep roots in San Antonio, with Chicano art and culture a centerpoint of the city.
A new art exhibition on display at the Contemporary at Blue Star showcases the art that represents the movimiento.
Xicanx: Dreamers + Changemakers | Soñadores + creadores del cambio originated at the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia from 2022 to 2023, curated by Jill Baird, former Curator of Education at MOA and Greta de León, Executive Director of ARENET.
Nearly three dozen artists from across the country and San Antonio contributed to the colorful and defiant exhibit.
Jacqueline Saragoza McGilvray, the Contemporary’s Curator and Exhibitions Director, said the exhibit centers on five themes — neighborhood, borderlands, activism, home, and identity.
“It (takes) somewhat of an anthropological approach to how it's looking at Xicanx culture. And so, of course, San Antonio is heavily represented.”
Calaveras — skulls or skeletons — are a recurring theme in many artworks, including in the diptych by artist Roberto Jose Gonzalez.
Gonzalez says his pieces, El Paso 8/3/19 and No Hate, No Fear, were inspired by the 2019 Walmart shooting in El Paso.
“The attack was based on hunting Mexicans, as the shooter so described. I wanted to represent that somehow, because it just seems like whenever there's a shooting, because there's so many shootings now, they're forgotten,” he said. “People are forgotten. The victims are forgotten. And I wanted to remember them.”
Another work by artist and printmaker Luis Valderas, called The Horizon, is an ode to the immigrant experience.
“I wanted to make a commentary on this idea of that xenophobia that's happening,” he said. “I made that in 2007 and we're still having to battle the same issues of immigration and border and identity making sure that we're compassionate to our fellow human beings.”
The name of the exhibition, Xicanx, is inspired by the Nahuatl and its frequent use of the letter X. That letter is largely used today in the movimiento to de-gender a gendered language.
San Antonio artist Debora Kuetzpal Vasquez — who contributed to the exhibition with her painting, Citlali: Cuando Eramos Sanos, or Citlali: When We Were Healthy — said the letter has a significant impact on herself.
“We're fighting this erasure,” she said. “I am a lesbiana and I am gender fluid, and that ‘Chicanx’ embraces all of the parts of me.”
Xicanx is on view through Oct. 6 at Contemporary at Blue Star in San Antonio.
TPR’s Norma Martinez will moderate a panel discussion Aug. 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.
View video from the exhibit below:
