'Tejas del Oeste al Este' ~ Art from the El Paso Museum of Art

Thursday, 29 November 2007 23:39

Beaumont, Texas - It must be a Texas-sized joke that the first sign seen when entering Texas along Interstate 10 from Louisiana says: "El Paso – 857 miles." The Art Museum of Southeast Texas (AMSET) is making that trip so that visitors don’t have to and bringing back a culturally significant exhibit of artwork by Hispanic-American artists. Tejas del Oeste al Este: Art from the El Paso Museum of Art (translated: Texas from West to East) will be on display at AMSET through Dec. 30, 2007.

"This is an extraordinary opportunity for people to see this seminal, culturally-important collection without having to travel over 800 miles across Texas to El Paso," said AMSET Curator of Exhibitions and Collections Ray Daniel. "We have such a large Hispanic-American population here in Southeast Texas, and this exhibition represents artists’ translations of the issues of cross-cultural identity."

Tejas del Oeste al Este: Art from the El Paso Museum of Art is a show of contemporary artwork by 22 Hispanic-American artists. The pieces are expressions of the artists’ struggles with identity, relationships and other factors in their daily lives related to being part of two cultures. The art depicts the subjects of border issues, fitting in with one foot in each culture, growing up in Hispanic neighborhoods in America, and deeper local to global identity issues.

A sampling of the show includes, but is not limited to:

1. • Artist Margarita Cabrera, who uses bold pop colors and grid compositions to visually address the issues related to the maquiladora industry, or American assembly plants in Mexico. Cabrera creates soft sculptures by replacing all materials used by laborers with colorful vinyl fabric, offering a metaphor for the lack of support for the plant workers. 
   
2. • César Martínez is a painter and printmaker from Laredo, Texas, who draws from childhood memories and utilizes yearbook photographs, newspaper and magazine depictions of cultural icons as sources of inspiration. In the portrait Bato con Sunglasses (above), Martínez explores the issues of identity and self-cultivation.
   
3. • A largely self-taught artist, Gloria Osuna Pérez creates portraits articulating archetypal bonds of family and community that stress the importance of feminine relationships. El Mandado utilizes portraits of her grandmother and good friend flanking a two-wheeled wire cart to show that grocery shopping is not just a trivial domestic task, but an important act of socialization for women of that generation.
   

The Mission of the Art Museum of Southeast Texas is to provide education, inspiration and creative vision to the people of our culturally diverse region through our collections, exhibitions, public programs, and outreach in the visual arts.

Art Museum of Southeast Texas (409) 832-3432 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it s www.amset.org