This new artist talk series features artists from Xicanx: Dreamers + Changemakers / Soñadores + creadores del cambio speaking about their works. The roundtable dialogues will be moderated by exhibition co-curators Jill Baird and Greta de León. Xicanx Speaks! is an opportunity to learn more from these artists who are confronting the critical issues of our time such as racism, diversity, and identity.

The September 24 edition of Xicanx Speaks! will feature Judith F. Baca, Sarah Castillo and Kathy Vargas.

Join us for the full series of Xicanx Speaks!:
September 24: Judith F. Baca, Sarah Castillo + Kathy Vargas
October 15: Celia Álvarez Muñozs, Linda Vallejo + Debora Kuetzpal Vasquez
October 22: Delilah Montoya, Oree Original + Alfred J. Quiroz
November 12: Alejandro Diaz, Carlos Frésquez + Ana Lilia Salinas
November 19: Julio César Morales, Celeste de Luna + Luis Valderas

This is a hybrid event that will take place in-person (drop-in) and online (registration required, link below).

Bios

Judith F. Baca is an internationally renowned artist, activist and Chicana scholar who has been creating public art for four decades. She is the co-founder and artistic director or SPARC (Social and Public Art Resource Center) which promotes social justice and participatory public arts. Baca stands for art in the service of equity for all people. Her murals are powerful in size and subject matter, and bring art to where people live and work. In 1974, Baca founded the City of Los Angeles’ first mural program, that has produced over 400 murals and employed thousands of local participants. In 2016 she was named Rockefeller Fellow the US Artist Fellowship. In 2021, The Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) hosted a major retrospective entitled Judy Baca: Memoria de Nuestra Tierra A Retrospective.

Sarah Castillo is a mixed-media artist born and raised in San Antonio. Her work reflects her personal journey and reflections on being a Xicanx feminist and performance artist. Mental health, identity and their embodiment are consistent themes in her work. Castillo obtained her MA Bicultural Studies from the University of Texas at San Antonio. She is co-founder of Mas Rudas Collective and the founder of Lady Base Gallery. She was selected for the IV Biennial in El Paso & CD. Juarez in 2015, and was awarded a National Association for Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC) Fund for the Arts: San Antonio Artist Grant in 2016. Castillo has shown her work at the University of Texas at San Antonio, Artpace, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, UTSA Institute of Texan Cultures, Mexic-Arte Museum, and the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts.

Kathy Vargas received her MFA from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 1984. She has had solo exhibits in Rome, Mexico City, and Buenos Aires, as well as retrospectives at the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio and Universität Erlangen in Germany. Two major travelling exhibits that featured Varga’s works include Hospice: A Photographic Inquiry at the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C. (1996), and Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation (1990-1993), are credited with raising the profiles of Chicano/a art nationally and internationally. Her work is in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Toledo Museum of Art, the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and others. Named the 2005 Texas Two-Dimensional Artist of the Year by the Texas Commission on the Arts, she also received a Light Work Residency in 1993 and an Artpace Residency in 1997. Her papers are housed at the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art. She is currently a professor of Art/Photography at the University of the Incarnate Word.

THIS EVENT WAS FUNDED IN PART BY A GRANT FROM THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF STATE. THE OPINIONS, FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS STATED HEREIN ARE THOSE OF THE ORGANIZERS AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THOSE OF THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF STATE.