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    In Milwaukee, Four Artists Unravel Trauma to Move Toward Collective Wellness

    Swoon, “Medea” (2017), wood, hand cut paper, laser cut paper, linoleum block print on paper, acrylic gouache, cardboard, lighting elements

    In Milwaukee, Four Artists Unravel Trauma to Move Toward Collective Wellness

    August 21, 2025

    ArtColossalSocial Issues

    Grace Ebert

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    In a world riddled with injustice and predicated on privilege for the few at the expense of the many, what does it mean to be well? An exhibition opening Friday at the Haggerty Museum of Art in Milwaukee considers the effects of concealed trauma and the inextricable ties between personal health and collective wellness.

    No One Knows All It Takes invites four artists—Bryana Bibbs, Raoul Deal, Maria Gaspar, and Swoon (previously)—who utilize art-making to grapple with complex emotions, imagine solutions to widespread problems, and share their stories and those of others. The timely exhibition, curated by Colossal, brings forth pressing issues like addiction, incarceration, immigration, and a lack of support for caregivers, conveyed through visually arresting works across media.

    Bryana Bibbs, “1.25.24-1.26.24” (2024), handwoven Papa George hospital blanket, Papa George playing cards, gifted pants, 11.5 x 14.5 inches

    No One Knows All It Takes opens with portraits by Deal, intimate renderings made through hours of conversations with the subjects. Paired with his wooden sculptures, the elaborate carvings explore the central role of immigration in American history and culture. Bibbs’ weavings and monotype prints—created while she cared for her dying grandparents with many of their belongings— follow as a sort of ghostly archive of what remains after death.

    Swoon’s “Medea” fills the fourth gallery space, a deeply personal installation that the artist made, in part, to confront her mother’s lifelong struggle with addiction and mental illness. An exposed tarantula mother, portraits of Swoon’s own family, wooden windows, and audio elements layer personal artifacts with recurring motifs about intergenerational trauma.

    The Wisconsin iteration of Gaspar’s Disappearance Jail series tucks into a smaller, more confined space at the end of the exhibition. Featuring images of 113 prisons, jails, and juvenile and immigrant detention facilities throughout the state, the project invites visitors to use hole punches to literally remove and obscure the carceral spaces. Because incarceration has historically been the only manner in which society addresses harm and trauma, Gaspar’s work tasks each person with the abolitionist exercise of imagining other possibilities.

    Raoul Deal, “Trenzas” (2023), woodcut with deckled edge, 28 x 42 inches

    The title, No One Knows All It Takes, came from a conversation with Bibbs, in which she described the emotional, mental, and physical toll of caring for her grandparents in their final months. Referencing the intersecting and multilayered effects of trauma, the phrase is also multivalent: it invokes the immense amount of energy needed to function while ill, the wide-reaching impacts of trauma on an individual’s life, and the social, political, and cultural costs of unaddressed issues.

    No One Knows All It Takes will be on view from August 22 to December 20. The Haggerty Museum of Art is located at Marquette University in Milwaukee.

    Maria Gaspar, Disappearance Jail series (detail), (2021-ongoing), hundreds of perforated archival Inkjet prints on rice paper, 5 x 7 inches each

    Raoul Deal, “Immigration Series #8” (2013), woodcut, 40 x 26 1/4 inches

    Swoon, “Medea” (2017), wood, hand cut paper, laser cut paper, linoleum block print on paper, acrylic gouache, cardboard, lighting elements

    Bryana Bibbs, “12.27.23” (2023), handwoven Papa George casino playing cards, Papa George hospital blanket, 14 x 9.25 inches

    Bryana Bibbs, “8.26.24” (2024), handwoven Papa George athletic tee, Papa George gifted pajama pants, Mema decor flowers, 25 x 9 inches

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    In ‘JUJU’s Castle,’ Jean Jullien Reinvents His Childhood Escapes

    All images © Jean Jullien, courtesy of Nanzuka Art Institute, shared with permission

    In ‘JUJU’s Castle,’ Jean Jullien Reinvents His Childhood Escapes

    August 15, 2025

    Art

    Grace Ebert

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    As a child, Jean Jullien (previously) preferred to spend his time immersed in the pixelated worlds of video games, embarking on adventures with action figures, and reinventing himself in RPGs. Imagining a universe parallel to his own offered a joyful refuge when he needed it most.

    Jullien summons this memory for JUJU’s Castle, an enormous, multi-gallery exhibition that invites viewers into the artist’s youthful fantasyland. Rendered in his signature flat, two-dimensional style, monsters, wizards, menacing mushroom creatures, knights, and friendly faces stand ready for play. From tile-esque floors to brightly painted walls to fiery lights lining dungeon walkways, each detail captures Jullien’s exuberant and witty aesthetic. “Years later, as the world seems more and more dire, I’ve decided to visit Juju’s castle once more and to open its doors to the public,” he says.

    Eighty small paintings accompany the larger installations and sculptures and are vignettes of make-believe and amusement. There are games of chess, hand-made masks and costumes, and even an elephant slide like those found on the playgrounds of Taiwan.

    Although his works often appear lighthearted, Jullien frequently responds to some of today’s most pressing issues, including capitalism’s grip on society and the all-too-relatable feelings of existential dread. JUJU’s Castle is another response to contemporary life. He says:

    With constant news of war, global warming, pandemics, and dystopic technological advancements, it seems like our daily lives have become more and more anxiogenic. But there is resistance in the form of escapism, and people have resorted to it in many ways. From video games to role playing games, cosplays, niche literatures, and online communities, people have found means to deviate from the harsh reality.

    If you’re in Shanghai, visit Nanzuka Art Institute before October 26 to immerse yourself in Jullien’s world. Otherwise, explore more of his work on his website and Instagram.

    “Toshima Playground” (2025), acrylic gouache on canvas, 35.5 x 47.7 x 3.3 centimeters

    “Masks” (2025), acrylic gouache on canvas, 35.5 x 47.7 x 3.3 centimeters

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    A Glowing Inflatable Canyon by ENESS Squeezes Inside Melbourne’s Prahran Square

    All images courtesy of ENESS, shared with permission

    A Glowing Inflatable Canyon by ENESS Squeezes Inside Melbourne’s Prahran Square

    August 15, 2025

    Art

    Grace Ebert

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    Although it appears that thousands of tons of boulders have been dropped into Prahran Square in Melbourne, the enormous rocks are actually as light as air. Art and technology studio ENESS (previously) has installed its inflatable “Iwagumi Air Scape” in the park, creating an immersive canyon for visitors to wander through.

    While the 16 massive stones have a grainy, granite-like texture during the day, at night, they glow in otherworldly pinks and yellows, creating a surreal landscape that illuminates the urban environment. Audio of flora and fauna accompanies the work, so that when viewers squeeze through what would be a treacherous pass between real boulders, the soft inflatables and mountain sounds wrap them in a natural embrace.

    The outdoor installation is on view through August 17, when it will travel to additional locations. Keep up with its stops on ENESS’s Instagram.

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    An Inflatable Building Recreates the Iconic Mecca Flats at the Heart of Chicago’s Black Renaissance

    All images courtesy of Floating Museum, shared with permission

    An Inflatable Building Recreates the Iconic Mecca Flats at the Heart of Chicago’s Black Renaissance

    August 12, 2025

    ArtDesignHistory

    Grace Ebert

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    As the World’s Fair loomed on Chicago’s horizon, architects Willoughby J. Edbrooke and Franklin Pierce Burnham built a 98-unit hotel to house visitors. After the exposition was finished, the Romanesque Revival building with a large central courtyard was converted into apartments and became known as Mecca Flats.

    Chicago adhered to strict segregation codes in the 19th century, and Mecca Flats, located in the Bronzeville neighborhood at 3360 S. State Street, wasn’t immune. The complex originally only allowed white residents, before allowing Black residents in 1911. Quickly, the building became a site for creatives well-known in the Black Renaissance. Gwendolyn Brooks famously titled a book after the tenement, and luminaries Muddy Waters and Katherine Dunham called Mecca Flats home.

    View of the indoor atrium at the Mecca Flats, East 34th and South State Street, Chicago, Illinois.

    Although a historical beacon of Black creativity, the Illinois Institute of Technology razed the building in 1952. It was replaced by the Mies van der Rohe-designed S.R. Crown Hall.

    While Mecca Flats are long gone, its memory lives on throughout Chicago, and thanks to the collective known as Floating Museum, a new artwork revives the cultural hub. “for Mecca” is a large-scale inflatable structure recreating the once-thriving complex in grayscale polyester. Scaled down, this iteration stretches 41 feet long, with a U-shaped passageway for viewers to walk through.

    Floating Museum is co-directed by avery r. young, Andrew Schachman, Faheem Majeed, and Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford, who share that the project offers a “tangible artifact” of Chicago’s lost history. They say:

    “for Mecca” represents our collective interest in Bronzeville’s complex history. We can no longer view nostalgic images of Mies van der Rohe—enjoying a cigar in the emptiness of S.R. Crown Hall—without also imagining Mecca Flats, collapsed under his feet, and recalling the slow strategic displacement of the African American community signified by the presence of its absence.

    The project also includes several nods to former South Side institutions, including the jazz dancehall Savoy Ballroom and the Regal Theatre, a popular night club and performance venue.

    Debuting this past weekend at the original site, the project will travel around the city’s parks through the summer of 2026. “for Mecca” is the latest project in the collective’s Floating Monuments series, which seeks to uncover critical cultural and historical legacies within Chicago through public installations.

    Find more from Floating Museum on its website.

    The Stroll, Regal Theater, and the Savoy Ballroom, Chicago, 1941. Photo by Russell Lee. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives.

    Savoy Ballroom, 47th Street and South Parkway, Chicago, 1929. Curt Teich Postcard Archives Digital Collection, Newberry Library.

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    In ‘Bourdon Street Chippy,’ Lucy Sparrow Celebrates a British Culinary Institution in Felt

    Photos by Alun Callender for JBPR. All images courtesy of the artist and Lyndsey Ingram, shared with permission

    In ‘Bourdon Street Chippy,’ Lucy Sparrow Celebrates a British Culinary Institution in Felt

    August 7, 2025

    ArtCraftFood

    Kate Mothes

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    From fried cod to red saveloy sausage to the carb-lover’s chip butty—a simple sandwich made with chunky fries on a buttered roll—the menu at Bourdon Street Chippy resembles what you’d expect to see at a traditional British fish and chips shop. The only real difference, despite the delectable-looking cones of deep-fried treats and perfectly formed pies, is that everything from the jarred, picked eggs to the battered haddock to the wall decor is made from felt.

    The brainchild of artist Lucy Sparrow (previously), Bourdon Street Chippy is the latest in a series of elaborate, large-scale, interactive installations highlighting quotidian places like supermarkets, pharmacies, and bodegas that we visit all the time but rarely think of much in the way of aesthetics. Crafted in soft fiber, many of the artist’s renditions of merchandise and food sport cute, smiling expressions while faithfully replicating iconic dishes and products.

    Bourdon Street Chippy is presented by Lyndsey Ingram Gallery, which is located on Bourdon Street in London. While the scampi and chips that Sparrow whips up aren’t edible, they are available for purchase. Visitors are welcome to peruse the menu and order their takeaway directly from the artist. “As much theatre as art, the familiarity of…these spaces disarms the viewer, taking them to a playful, often nostalgic place,” the gallery says.

    The exhibition includes handmade banquette seating and a wall-to-wall gallery of sewn portraits of the chippy’s famous patrons. Read fabric menus, have an even tougher time than usual getting ketchup to come out of the Heinz bottles, and be reminded not to feed the seagulls. All in all, the installation includes more than 65,000 individual felt pieces, including 15 chip shapes in different colors.

    The exhibition continues through September 14. Find more on the artist’s website and Instagram.

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    Laser-Cut Steel Forms Radiate Ornate Patterns in Anila Quayyum Agha’s Immersive Installations

    “A Beautiful Despair (Blue)” (2021), lacquered steel and halogen bulb, 60 x 60 x 60 inches. Image courtesy of Sundaram Tagore Gallery, NYC, © the artist. Photo by Steve Watson / Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth. All images courtesy of Seattle Asian Art Museum, shared with permission

    Laser-Cut Steel Forms Radiate Ornate Patterns in Anila Quayyum Agha’s Immersive Installations

    August 6, 2025

    Art

    Kate Mothes

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    Influenced by the ornate decor of Islamic mosaics and architecture, Anila Quayyum Agha creates large-scale installations that utilize the power of light and shadow to transform a room. Laser-cut steel structures, like her seminal work “Intersections,” take a simple cube as a starting point. The artist incises elaborate patterns from the surface, then situates a light inside, which casts shadows onto the surrounding walls.

    Anila Quayyum Agha: Geometry of Light, which opens later this month at the Seattle Asian Art Museum, marks the first time the Pakistani-American artist’s work has been exhibited in the Pacific Northwest. Based in Indianapolis, she is known for exploring the ever-evolving relationships between cultural identity, gender, art, and spirituality.

    “A Beautiful Despair (Blue)” (2021), lacquered steel and halogen bulb, 60 x 60 x 60 inches. Image courtesy of Sundaram Tagore Gallery, NYC, © the artist. Photo courtesy of Masterpiece Art Fair, London

    “Through the use of light and color, the artist’s ornate designs have the ability to turn spaces into ethereal environments reminiscent of traditional sacred spaces through the use of lanterns or mashrabiya, wooden lattice screens that diffuse light, casting intricate shadows while allowing for the flow of air and creating intimacy,” the museum says.

    Geometry of Light will include three of Agha’s space-transforming installations, plus a number of framed, mixed-media paper works. The exhibition runs from August 27 to April 19, 2026, and you can find more on the artist’s website and Instagram.

    “This is Not a refuge! (2)” (2019), laser-cut, resin-coated aluminum and light bulb, 93 x 58 x 72 inches. Courtesy of Sundaram Tagore Gallery, NYC, © the artist. Photo courtesy of Columbia Museum, Columbia, North Carolina

    “A Beautiful Despair (Blue)” (2021), lacquered steel and halogen bulb, 60 x 60 x 60 inches. Image courtesy of Sundaram Tagore Gallery, NYC, © the artist. Photo by Steve Watson / Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth

    “Liminal Space” (2021), laser-cut and lacquered steel, 65 x 65 inches. Image courtesy of Sundaram Tagore Gallery, NYC, © the artist. Photo by Steve Watson / Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth

    Detail of “Liminal Space” (2021). Photo by Steve Watson / Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth

    “This is Not a refuge! (2)” (2019), laser-cut, resin-coated aluminum and light bulb, 93 x 58 x 72 inches. Courtesy of Sundaram Tagore Gallery, NYC, © the artist. Photo courtesy of Masterpiece Art Fair, London

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    An Expansive Survey in Scotland Celebrates Five Decades of Land Art by Andy Goldsworthy

    “Oak Passage” (2025) and “Ferns” (2025), installation view at the National Galleries of Scotland. All images courtesy of the artist and National Galleries of Scotland, shared with permission

    An Expansive Survey in Scotland Celebrates Five Decades of Land Art by Andy Goldsworthy

    July 29, 2025

    ArtNature

    Kate Mothes

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    Andy Goldsworthy grew up on the edge of Leeds, with Yorkshire’s rural fields in one direction and the city’s urban center in the other. As a teenager, he worked on local farms, which instilled an early respect for the land—and a fascination that would blossom into an interdisciplinary art practice throughout the next several decades. Based for the last forty years in Dumfriesshire in southern Scotland, the artist continues to draw inspiration from the forests, hills, and fields of this picturesque part of Britain.

    Employing a wide range of materials and settings from stones and leaves to streams and trees, the artist creates encounters that explore human interactions with the land. “The intention is…not to mimic nature but to understand it,” he told NPR in 2015. Temporary installations, typically documented after completion and then left to elements, mirror the way nature is always changing, whether going through cycles, evolving over time, or being actively transformed by human forces.

    “Edges made by finding leaves the same size. Tearing one in two. Spitting underneath and pressing flat on to another. Brough, Cumbria. Cherry patch. 4 November 1984” (1984), Cibachrome photograph

    The National Galleries of Scotland presents a new retrospective, Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years, in the Royal Scottish Academy building. Celebrating the trailblazing artist’s career, the survey features more than 200 photographs, sketchbooks, sculptures, installations, and archival items dating from some of his earliest experiments in the mid-1970s to pieces conceived for the show this year.

    Goldsworthy draws our attention to nature and the way it behaves—or doesn’t—by conjuring uncanny occurrences. A crack in fallen leaves resembles a fissure in the earth, or he highlights a hole in an elm tree by literally outlining the jagged opening in bright yellow. The artist also interacts with nature through physical participation, like climbing through a wintry hedgerow as if challenging its function as a boundary and demonstrating its possibilities as a conduit instead.

    Goldsworthy learned many of the techniques he employs in his practice through his early experiences working on farms in Yorkshire. He baled hay, prepared fields for planting through a method called harrowing, fed livestock, and piled stones. In art school, he began experimenting with photography and film to document ephemeral works he created in the landscape.

    Throughout the past five decades, Goldsworthy has established himself as a leading contemporary land artist, influenced by the work of seminal figures like Robert Smithson and Joseph Beuys and in turn influencing the work of younger artists like Jon Foreman or Laura Ellen Bacon. Goldsworthy emphasizes the beauty and nobility of working the land, not by trying to control it but by working in tandem with his surroundings and to illuminate details and patterns we might not otherwise see.

    “Elm leaves held with water to fractured bough of fallen elm. Dumfriesshire, Scotland. 29 October 2010” (2010), from ‘Fallen Elm’ (2009–ongoing), a suite of ninety archival inkjet prints

    The human relationship with the natural environment continues to be a central focus of Goldsworthy’s interventions, from a piece for which he carved up chunks of snow and hauled them across the countryside to the way he interprets the interior space of the Royal Scottish Academy building for the current exhibition. A large-scale installation called “Oak Passage,” for example, transforms a gallery into a tidy thicket with a lane through the center, presenting both a barrier and a channel, depending on how it’s approached.

    While he doesn’t generally view himself as a performer, he often portrays himself in the midst of interventions, capturing the activities in photos and film. A public context for his pieces, whether installed inside or outdoors, invites people to move around and activate the work. For this exhibition, his interactions with the historic Royal Scottish Academy building are conceived as a single work, considering the continuum of history, people, art, and the elements that have had an impact on the site over time.

    Find more on the artist’s website. Plan your visit to Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years, which continues through November 25 in Edinburgh, on the museum’s website. Head down the road to the National Museum of Scotland and keep an eye out for a small sculpture by Goldsworthy permanently marking the entrance to the atmospheric Early People display. And if you’re headed to Yorkshire, discover four permanent installations by the artist along the Andy Goldsworthy Trail.

    “Wool Runner” (2025) at the Royal Scottish Academy, National Galleries of Scotland

    “Frozen patch of snow. Each section carved with a stick. Carried about 150 paces, several broken along the way. Began to thaw as day warmed up. Helbeck, Cumbria. March 1984 (1984), Cibachrome photograph

    “Cracked Line through Leaves” (1986)

    “Hedge crawl. Dawn. Frost. Cold hands. Sinderby, England. 4 March 2014” (2014), video still

    “Wool. Hung from fallen elm. Dumfriesshire, Scotland. 6 August 2015” (2015), from ‘Fallen Elm’ (2009-ongoing) , a suite of ninety archival inkjet prints

    “Gravestones” (2025) at the Royal Scottish Academy, National Galleries of Scotland

    “Hazel stick throws. Banks, Cumbria. 10 July 1980” (1980), suite of nine black-and-white photographs

    “Rain shadow. Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, Scotland. 10 June 2024” (2024)

    “Stretched canvas on field, with mineral block removed, after a few days of sheep eating it” (1997)

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    Five Latinx Artists Explore Materiality, Identity, and Belonging in ‘Los Encuentros’

    Facade mural by Ozzie Juarez. Photos by Alex Marks. All images courtesy of Ballroom Marfa, shared with permission

    Five Latinx Artists Explore Materiality, Identity, and Belonging in ‘Los Encuentros’

    July 23, 2025

    ArtSocial Issues

    Kate Mothes

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    Marfa sits at the crossroads of US-90 and US-67 in the expansive Chihuahua Desert of far West Texas. About 60 miles from Mexico, U.S. Border Patrol trucks are a common sight along the roads, in addition to an unmissable, otherworldly tethered surveillance blimp that hovers near the highway between the town center and one of its most iconic installations, Elmgreen & Dragset’s “Prada Marfa.”

    As the current administration’s immigration policy has taken effect, the politics of identity and geography have again been thrust front and center—often violently. In this remote borderland, where the one-stoplight-town has been redefined by influential art world personalities for several decades in an idiosyncratic convergence of ideas and lifestyles, there is a unique opportunity to engage with themes of community, narrative, socio-economic realities, and a sense of place.

    Justin Favela

    Ballroom Marfa’s summer exhibition, Los Encuentros, gathers the work of Latinx artists Justin Favela, Ozzie Juarez, Antonio Lechuga, Narsiso Martinez, and Yvette Mayorga. The gallery describes an aim of the show, the title of which translates to “the meetings” or “the gatherings,” as “the representation of Latinx culture to confront the accessibility of art spaces, colonial art histories, the conditions of labor, and lived experience.”

    Amid daily news reports of ICE raids around the nation, the work in Los Encuentros is a timely and provocative exploration of today’s societal complexities along with being a way of “responding to the experiences of the people and places they engage with and depict,” a statement says.

    All the artists employ a wide range of materials and techniques, from Mayorga’s frosting-like, piped paint to Favela’s vibrant ruffled paper installations redolent of piñatas. Lechuga uses Mexican blankets, or cobijas, creating sewn textile collages that explore a wide range of experiences and perspectives amid the current political climate.

    Martinez continues to create intimate, candid portraits of farm workers by using produce boxes, bags, and repurposed plastic as his substrates as a reminder of the often invisible labor that goes into putting food on Americans’ tables. And Juarez has completely transformed Ballroom’s facade in to a giant painting derived from ancient Mesoamerican motifs.

    Narsiso Martinez

    Los Encuentros is curated by Texas-based Maggie Adler, who expressed delight at being able to collaborate “with artists whose practices center on allowing a broad range of community members to see themselves represented in art spaces.”

    The show continues through October 12. Find more on the gallery’s website. And during open hours, keep an eye out for Rachel Hayes’ colorful patchwork flag that flies out front.

    Ozzie Juarez

    Narsiso Martinez

    Justin Favela

    Antonio Lechuga

    Detail of a work by Antonio Lechuga

    Yvette Mayorga

    Detail of a work by Yvette Mayorga

    Antonio Lechuga

    Detail of a work by Antonio Lechuga

    Narsiso Martinez

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