5 Latinx Artists Transforming Everyday Materials, From Cobijas to Piñatas, Into Statements on Identity

Despite its remote location, the small, high desert city of Marfa in far West Texas is a destination that the art world eagerly makes a pilgrimage to, with an internationally recognized scene that entices visitors all over the world. At Ballroom Marfa, one of the city’s cornerstone art institutions, however, the exhibition “Los Encuentros,” on view through March 29 of next year, doesn’t seek to cater to these types of in-the-know national and international audiences, but instead one much closer to home.

“I don’t really care that art world people, art world insiders love and embrace the show,” said exhibition curator Maggie Adler on a video call. Instead, she described the best compliment coming from a nearby gas station attendant who had watched the commission on the exterior façade as it was created day by day by artist Ozzie Juaras and was moved by it.

The work, (2025), synthesizes street art from across Los Angeles with elements of Aztec culture to create a “Ballroom deity” that embodies the dichotomies between “earth and sky, instinct and creativity, gravity and joy.”

“Even if she didn’t walk into the building, she had an experience with art that was for her,” said Adler.

The show brings together the work of five Latinx artists—Juarez, Justin Favela, Antonio Lechuga, Narsiso Martinez, and Yvette Mayorga—who each explore the intricacies and diversity of Latinx culture through very disparate practices.

While calls for more diverse institutional arts programming have intensified over the past five years, few institutions have managed to rise to the occasion fully. With this show, Adler, the artists, and the Ballroom team have homed in on the specificity of the locale and their audience: Marfa is located just an hour north of the Mexican border, and Texas’s population of Hispanic and Latinx hovers at around 40 percent. The result is a group show of uncommon clarity and vision.

Creative Synergy

“Los Encuentros” has been as much a passion project as an institutional program. Adler, who formerly spent more than a decade as a curator at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art (the Carter) in Fort Worth, already had a working relationship with Favela. The Carter had previously commissioned the artist for the installation (2019), inspired by Alexander Calder, nachos, and piñatas. Since then, Adler had been hoping for an opportunity to collaborate again.

Shortly after departing the Carter, Adler’s friend and Ballroom Marfa Executive Director Holly Harrison invited her to visit Antonia Lechuga’s studio. Adler described the experience as a type of “exquisite torture,” as she connected with his work, but no longer had an institution behind her.  The path to supporting the artist’s work wasn’t so straightforward.

But it did catalyze a realization, Adler said, “I’m not doing these projects and working with these artists and being their interlocutor because I was at the Carter, I’m doing them because I’m me at the Carter.” And the seed of an idea was born. Though Adler’s story is not explicitly linked to “Los Encuentros,” it parallels the theme of looking beyond institutional walls and engaging with the art, artists, culture, and community outside them.

Both Favela and Lechuga share a penchant for employing everyday materials and transforming them into works that deliver cogent visual experiences through means counter to expectations of “high” art.  On the recommendation of Ballroom Marfa’s curatorial assistant Felix Benton, Juarez soon entered the mix. Juarez is represented by Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles, which led Adler to Narsiso Martinez. Adler was already familiar with Martinez’s work, having made one of his first institutional acquisitions, (2021), a few years earlier.

With four artists who were men, Adler went in search of the “badest of badass women” to join the group. Enter Yvette Mayorga, an artist who coined the term “Latinxoco” in reference to her synthesis of Laninx culture and dramatic, visually delectable style.

“It was clear from that moment on that we had the right mix of artists and never looked back.”

Medium Specificity

Arguably, the most compelling aspect of “Los Encuentros” is the material diversity. Despite drawing from parallel and even overlapping cultural and contextual references, there is little in the way of medium overlap—and each artist’s employment of medium speaks as strongly to their practices and overarching project as much as the purely visual elements. “That was really the raison d’être of selecting these artists,” said Adler, “that was the underpinning thread, the materials.”

Lechuga’s work falls somewhere between collage and tapestry. The Texas native uses various , fleece blankets with printed pictorial designs, which he cuts and reassembles to create new compositions that engage with themes of protection, comfort, and home. These types of fleece blankets are staples in many Latinx households; inexpensive yet warm and decorative, they are commonly found at everyday flea markets, shops, and marketplaces both in Mexico and across the American Southwest—which is where Lechuga sources them. The style and material were first popularized by the San Marcos brand, made in Mexico between 1976 and 2004, but imitations have proliferated, and they remain popular today.

Tapping religious, spiritual, and ancient cultural symbols, from a scene featuring St. Cristopher to fantastical portraits of animals like a panther, the visual tactility and, for many viewers, the visceral memory of the feel of the cobija are as much part of the weight of the work as the imagery itself.

In Ballroom’s entry gallery space, a series of works by Martinez showcases a similar approach to material content. Using found commercial fruit, vegetable, and grocery store packaging—like cardboard produce boxes used to transport oranges, squash, or apples, plastic containers for lettuce or clementines, Whole Foods paper bags—as a support, he draws portraits and populated vignettes of the farmworkers who are primarily responsible for harvesting crops that feed millions of Americans.

Placing renderings of these farmworkers on one of the basic materials of their work essentially collapses the distance between producer and consumer and highlights a populace that, despite how vital they are to society, is frequently exploited, marginalized, and, in the current political climate, persecuted.

The materials also give insight into the artist’s own history, as Martinez himself worked as a farmworker, which he illustrates in (2025), which includes a self-portrait of the artist alongside one of his coworkers. It’s a poignant testament not only to oft-overlooked farmworker communities but the deeply human experience of community building and connection.

Cultural Context

There are two vehicles—albeit of sorts—in the exhibition, one by Favela and the other by Mayorga.

Mayorga’s (2024) is a feminine visual delight. A vintage station wagon has been painted bubblegum pink and carefully “frosted” like a celebratory cake. Within, pink shag covers nearly every surface, and the dash too has piped acrylic “frosting.” A variety of additional objects, like a pink Tamagotchi, pink rosaries, an iPhone in a pink case, Hello Kitty stuffies, and more, are placed throughout the interior.

When the show first opened, the car hadn’t been installed yet; customs had stopped it at the Mexican border (ultimately, its engine had to be removed to pass through). But the unplanned journey and delay of the work ended up contributing another contextual layer to the exhibition.

Adler noted, “So many people make that daily commute as labor for Texas, and the difficulties of crossing the border as a human, it wasn’t easy, but the fact that the car made it through is a type of statement in and of itself of the permeability of the border for objects versus humans, it’s really a whole other layer of complexity and nuance for the show that I think is important to point out, and exactly why I wanted to do the show near the border opening July 4th. That was very purposeful.”

Surrounded by several more equally elaborate works by Mayorga, including a life-size figurative sculpture of a man and woman wearing a combination of historical European and contemporary Mexican styles, including Mexican pointy boots on the man and extravagantly detailed nail set on the woman, the gallery space is transformed into a vibrant almost surreal other world, one where women’s labor, feminine aesthetics, and histories of colonization and oppression have been fully reclaimed.

Favela’s car, (2022), is at the scale of an actual car, but hangs from the ceiling in Ballroom’s North gallery and is made in the manner of a piñata, covered in tissue paper frills and swaying with the ambient movements of the air in the gallery space.

While the connection to Latinx culture can be traced through the materials and form, also conceptually connects to Marfa’s history, and the work of John Chamberlain, an American mid-century artist best known for his sculptures made of crushed car parts. Chamberlain’s works are permanently on view at the nearby Chinati Foundation.

Other works by Favela continue the links to the artistic juggernauts who historically left their mark on Marfa. (2025), made from fluorescent tube lights in the shape of an ear of corn, pays homage to Dan Flavin; (2010) evoke the metal cubes made by Donald Judd; (2025) a larger-than-life cigar box, recalls the oversized sculptures of everyday objects by Claes Oldenberg.

The walls of the gallery space, too, have been meticulously covered in piñata-style fringed tissue paper, with the color paralleling that of a workroom at the Judd Foundation.

“I use the medium of piñata to express myself in a different way,” said the artist, “The installations are about these spaces where people expect me to be representative of my culture. Not only is [my work] about identity and nostalgia, it’s also about my navigating the art world, showcasing my identity, and the complexities of that.”

Encounters

“Los Encuentros” doesn’t shy away from the complexities of Latinx culture, sociopolitical issues, or history. Instead, each artist, in their own way, digs deeper, using recognizable, everyday objects and materials to challenge commonly held assumptions about not only what art is or can be, but also who it is for.

In a walkthrough of the exhibition, Harrison remarked that the opening was one of the highest attended in Ballroom’s history, and for many, it was their first time at the venue, perhaps because it was the first time they felt a show was specifically for them. While each artist’s work independently delves into the intricacies of their personal experiences and perspectives, when considered holistically, the show presents a poignant tribute to identity and community—and what can be achieved when thinking beyond museum walls.

Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com