Two border artists travel the Texas-Mexico frontier investigating ideas of place and identity through artistic engagement.
Analise Minjarez and Sarita Westrup, two artists from the border towns of El Paso and McAllen, TX, our individual works adopt iconography and forms inspired by Mexican-American culture, southwest landscape, and sensations of the spiritual. Our minimalist aesthetic evokes a subconscious style derived from a background neither full Mexican, nor American. We utilize multiple media, such as wood, natural dyed cloth, nets, paper, and gut; we dissect the concepts of borders in connection to cultural and personal identity.
Analise and Sarita will be traveling the Texas-Mexico border starting from El Paso and ending in McAllen,Texas asking questions such as, What does it mean to be from the border? How does this influence the arts in this area? How do museums and other organization raise awareness to the border experience? What inspires artists living in on the border and in what form does their artwork take?
During our travels we will be stopping along the way at various locations such as Teralingua, Sanderson, Del Rio, and Laredo during the time between December 23, 2014 – January 4, 2015 .This border trip will function as a experiential research for our work that revolves around the idea of place and identity and who are the people making art along these borders. We are scheduled to:
·Meet and connect with other border artists along the way by engaging in studio visits, interviews and exhibitions
·Host art and craft workshops
·Create a relationship to our natural environment by incorporating natural materials from the borderlands into artworks created during our travel
·Document our encounters with the community, artists, environment, and art making process through the use of photography and video
Artworks and documentation created during the trip will be included in an exhibition at the Oak Cliff Cultural Center in Dallas, Texas from January 23 – February 21, 2015.
Thank you for your Pledge!
*Please note each pledge will be honored with a reward in return. The reward will reach you between the months of January and February 2015. Pledgers will receive only one gift for the amount they pledge.
Risks and challenges
This is our first traveling public art piece and yet we are overwhelmed with support we have received when we share our project idea. Through out our time in the DFW, we have taken advantage of every opportunity that would shape our eligibility to complete this project. A completed BFA from the University of North Texas, internships at Oil & Cotton, monthly workshops at the Latino Cultural Center, and recent public art showings at El Paso Chalk the Block, Better Block Quatro, and Dallas Neiman Marcus has prepared us to take on the challenge that face an ongoing, nomadic art project.
A particularly unique challenge presented to us along our journey includes what content to include in our research and how its responds to our questions of visual art along the Texas-Mexico region. We are particularly concerned about the safety of our travels and will take the necessary precautions to drive a well equipped vehicle and lodge with those we trust. True to our concept of Mexican-American culture, we will travel along the US side of the Texas-Mexico border.