A new art exhibit is giving South Texas artists a chance to showcase their work while highlighting the culture, family and communities that inspire them.
The fourth annual “Soy De Tejas” exhibit is making its Coastal Bend debut, with artwork on display at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi’s downtown building and the Weil Gallery on campus.
For curator Rigoberto Luna, the exhibit is personal.
“I grew up kind of not seeing myself in museums, and I felt that it was important for future generations to see artists that looked like them, and not only looked like them but also made artwork that spoke to their experience,” Luna said.
Luna grew up in San Antonio, where he says he rarely saw his culture represented in the city’s art scene.
That changed when he was about 10 years old and the San Antonio Museum of Art hosted “Splendors,” a major exhibition that brought significant works from Mexico to the city.
“I was about 10 years old when Splendors came, which was the big exhibition that brought major artworks from Mexico to the San Antonio Museum of Art,” Luna said. “I mean, I was really young, but it had a major effect on me and my brother, who was actually featured in this show on the campus.”
Decades later, Luna is hoping “Soy De Tejas” can create that same kind of experience for a new generation.
The exhibit features work from South Texas artists, including Corpus Christi artist Ashley Thomas.
TAMU-CC art professor Joe Pena says Thomas draws inspiration from the refinery she grew up seeing from her grandmother’s home.
“Ashley Thomas is one of our most gifted artists here at Corpus,” Pena said. “She locates the refinery that we see out there, and so it’s kind of a way of that. She grew up seeing that from her grandmother’s home. It looked like Disneyland at night. It looked like the city of the future. So, rather than what it actually was, in a young mind, that’s what we see. That’s what we saw.”
Pena says the exhibit is also about encouraging young artists to draw from the experiences they know best.
“Speak about what you know best. You know your neighborhood. You know your family. You know your culture,” Pena said.
For Luna, that connection between representation and inspiration is at the heart of “Soy De Tejas.”
“When it’s only Latinos and they’re doing contemporary artwork, and they’re doing it in challenging ways, when younger generations come in and see that, it could be that Splendors show to them,” Luna said. “It could change the way that they see themselves and the way that they see art making in general.”