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Five Latinx Artists Explore Materiality, Identity, and Belonging in ‘Los Encuentros’
by Aurelia Butler 23 July 2025, 14:58
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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Six Activist Trolls Tromp Through a California Woodland to ‘Save the Humans’
by Aurelia Butler 22 July 2025, 17:32
“Kamma Can: The Treasure Troll.” All images courtesy of Filoli, shared with permission
Six Activist Trolls Tromp Through a California Woodland to ‘Save the Humans’
July 22, 2025
ArtNature
Grace Ebert
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As visitors wander through a mile-stretch of Filoli’s Natural Lands this summer, they’ll encounter a group of eager wooden characters ready to share their wisdom. Trolls: Save the Humans is a playful, yet urgent exhibition by Danish artist Thomas Dambo (previously), who’s known for creating enormous fairytale characters from reclaimed wood.
At Filoli, Dambo has installed six creatures, each with a distinct personality and agenda. There’s the innovative “Kamma Can,” a “treasure troll” that enjoys teaching people to turn their leftover wrappers and disposable containers into vibrant creations. “Ibbi Pip: The Birdhouse Troll” is similarly concerned with transforming the environment by installing avian homes, while “Sofus Lotufs: The Listening Troll” directs our attention to the forest floor and asks us to be mindful of the changes happening all around.
“Sofus Lotus: The Listening Troll”
“I’m so happy my Trolls get to spend some time amongst the giant redwoods at Filoli,” Dambo says. “I spent a day hiking in the forest, and it is a magical place where I know my Trolls will feel at home.”
Staggering in stature and inviting in presence, the characters are activists at their core and passionate about teaching sustainability. Like much of the artist’s practice, this exhibition utilizes the charm and wonder of fairytales to convey critical messages about the climate crisis and human behavior.
Trolls continues through November 10 in Woodside, California. Follow Dambo’s passionate personalities on Instagram.
“Ronja Redeye: The Speaker Troll”
Detail of “Sofus Lotus: The Listening Troll”
“Ibbi Pip: The Birdhouse Troll”
“Basse Buller: The Painting Troll”
“Sofus Lotus: The Listening Troll”
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JR’s Tree of 10,000 Hands Takes Root in a Former Montpellier Church
by Aurelia Butler 9 July 2025, 16:37
JR’s Tree of 10,000 Hands Takes Root in a Former Montpellier Church
July 9, 2025
Art
Grace Ebert
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Known for his large-scale participatory art projects, French artist JR has embarked on a new project that breathes life into a historic venue. A tree of 10,000 scanned and printed hands has sprouted in Carré Sainte-Anne, a Catholic church built in 1869 in the largely Protestant city of Montpellier as a call for unity. The venue in the south of France became an art center in 1991 and just recently reopened following seven years of renovations.
JR’s exhibition Adventice is the first commission in the revitalized space and takes its name from the Latin “ad venire,” which translates to “come from outside.” In botanical terms, the word often refers to weeds and specimens that spring up where they had not been intentionally planted.
Montpellier’s landscape is a direct result of travelers, trade, and the proliferation of opportunistic plants, according to Carré Sainte-Anne:
When the first drapery mills appeared along the banks of the Lez in the Middle Ages, unidentified flora started growing here and there. Fleece imported from Spain, North Africa, Constantinople, and Smyrna was washed in the waters, releasing these seeds from faraway lands, which grew thanks to the fertile conditions of the Mediterranean river.
Today, French gardens and landscapes pride themselves on the beauty of such diverse species living in harmony.
Always interested in drawing connections between individuals and broader social issues, JR draws on this history and contemporary issues of migration and displacement. Adventice suspends 10,000 hands from people within the local community and includes smaller wall works with similar depictions.
Set among the cavernous neo-Gothic architecture and stained-glass windows, the monumental installation celebrates the multitude of people necessary for an ecosystem to thrive. Each hand is presented as both a leaf and a seed, a sign of life and vitality and the essential component in the tree’s future.
Adventice will be on view through December 7, and visitors can contribute their hands to the work throughout the run of the exhibition.
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Blackburn’s National Festival of Making Celebrates Collaborations Between Art and Industry
by Aurelia Butler 9 July 2025, 14:32
Morag Myerscough in collaboration with Crown Paints. Photos by Robin Zahler. All images courtesy of the artists and the National Festival of Making, shared with permission
Blackburn’s National Festival of Making Celebrates Collaborations Between Art and Industry
July 9, 2025
ArtCraftDesign
Kate Mothes
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Every year, in the town of Blackburn, Lancashire, a vibrant festival erupts with creativity in a celebration of art, craft, and industry. This year marked the seventh edition of the National Festival of Making, organized along the theme of “Art in Manufacturing.” Acclaimed artists and designers teamed up with industry leaders to create works using a variety of materials, from Morag Myerscough’s collaboration with Crown Paints for a vibrant new mural to Liaqat Rasul’s partnership with textile producer Herbert Parkinson for an optical installation.
Locality played a central role in the festival, as artists were paired with manufacturers in Lancashire. Matter at hand, the design practice of Lewis Jones, teamed up with Darwen Terracotta and Faience, which focuses on traditional glazed earthenware for home products and restoration (faience is a type of tin-glazed pottery).
Liaqat Rasul in collaboration with Herbert Parkinson, “Umeed (Oh-meed) امید – Gobaith – Hope”
Matter at hand created a large-scale installation titled “Poured Earth,” which takes an architectural approach to materials in the northern transept of Blackburn Cathedral. The piece invites visitors to walk through an archway of wooden crates and around cast elements in various shapes and sizes, emphasizing the timelessness and continuity of earthen building materials and styles.
Morag Myerscough transformed a corner building into a characteristically vivid, geometric floral mural with complementary garden boxes and a water tank. Rasul’s piece, a multifaceted textile assemblage suspended in the Blackburn Cathedral crypt, features a friendly face made of independent elements that merge into a full visage when viewed from the front.
Titled “Umeed (Oh-meed) امید – Gobaith – Hope,” the piece was created from scraps salvaged from Herbert Parkinson’s factory floor in addition to the artist’s own archive. Rasul tenderly embroidered the Urdu, Hindu, and Welsh words for “hope” amid various found elements like cord and safety pins.
The National Festival of Making features a program of more than 100 workshops, performances, artist talks, markets, and more across more than 20 Blackburn venues. Emphasizing the power of collaboration, cross-disciplinary exploration, and community, the festival aims to empower people of all ages to lean into curiosity and get making.
Rasul and Lewis’s work will be on view through July 12, with Myerscough’s mural intended for long-term display. Find more on the festival’s website.
Matter at hand in collaboration with Darwen Terracotta, “Poured Earth”
Matter at hand in collaboration with Darwen Terracotta, “Poured Earth” (detail)
Morag Myerscough in collaboration with Crown Paints
Liaqat Rasul in collaboration with Herbert Parkinson, “Umeed (Oh-meed) امید – Gobaith – Hope” (detail)
Matter at hand in collaboration with Darwen Terracotta, “Poured Earth” (detail)
Detail of a mural by Morag Myerscough in collaboration with Crown Paints
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Site-Specific Textiles by Rachel B. Hayes Radiate Within Vast Landscapes and Sunlit Interiors
by Aurelia Butler 7 July 2025, 17:29
Mirror Lake, Bottomless Lakes State Park, New Mexico, 2015. All images courtesy of Rachel B. Hayes, shared with permission
Site-Specific Textiles by Rachel B. Hayes Radiate Within Vast Landscapes and Sunlit Interiors
July 7, 2025
ArtCraftDesign
Kate Mothes
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From myriad swaths of vivid, translucent fabric, Rachel B. Hayes conjures striking installations that transform our experiences of both interior spaces and expansive natural landscapes. The Tulsa-based artist suspends large-scale patchwork compositions in spaces ranging from barns and greenhouses to open fields and lakes, experimenting with scale, color, pattern, light, and movement in joyful installations.
Hayes’ works have been exhibited extensively around the U.S. and Europe, often stretched like quilted sun sails over courtyards. Her recent piece “Horizon Drift,” in collaboration with Black Cube in Denver, comprises a series of overlapping triangular elements that cast colorful shadows onto the pavement, similar to “A Moment in Time” in Capri.
“Horizon Drift” (2024) Denver, Colorado. Photo by Third Dune, courtesy of Black Cube Nomadic Art Museum
Usually installed for just a few weeks or months, Hayes’ installations temporarily merge with their surroundings, a nod to Jeanne-Claude and Christo’s monumentally ambitious fabric interventions. Richly patchworked or woven, the pieces also emphasize a joyful experience of light, breeze, and time-honored American quilting practices.
Hayes always enjoys looking back at earlier works and in situ experiments to inform new pieces. “I still get so much inspiration and energy from my temporary experiments…I keep coming back to my favorite sites that I know like the back of my hand but also learn and see new things every time I visit,” she says. She often returns to various sites in South Dakota, Missouri, and New Mexico to document work multiple times. The light, weather, and changes in the landscape always “read” differently, and she thinks of many of these pieces as part of a “long vision” within her practice.
Sometimes, Hayes’ works remain installed for a while longer, and she has embraced becoming something of a “fabric engineer.” Several long-term projects will likely be installed outdoors for at least five years, challenging the artist to select materials that will be both visually effective and endure the elements. “It is truly exhilarating to try and find ways to make my outdoor experiments last for longer periods of time,” she says.
Light, especially sunlight, plays a significant role in Hayes’ compositions and site selection, particularly indoors where architecture and prescribed routes influence how people move around and can view the work. “I am usually chasing the sun to see where it peeks through the space and plays with reflections and color-casted shadows, so it’s really important that I make the appropriate choice for the site,” she says. While the artist uses software like Photoshop or Procreate to compose the overall pattern, she primarily focuses on the physicality of the material and its unique interactions with different places.
Installation at Foreland, Catskill, New York. Photo by Adam T. Deen
Hayes’ installations are on view in Patterned by Nature at the Chicago Botanic Garden throughout the summer. You can also see her work in Soft Structures through August 8 at Jane Lombard Gallery in New York City and Body’s First Architecture through August 10 at Ely Center of Contemporary Art in New Haven, Connecticut.
Her semi-permanent exhibitions can be seen at the International Quilt Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska, and The Gathering Place in Tulsa. And if you find yourself in West Texas, Hayes’ flag is currently flown outside Ballroom Marfa during the gallery’s opening hours. Explore more on the artist’s website and Instagram.
You might also enjoy Wally Dion’s translucent quilts that honor Indigenous traditions.
Fruitlands Museum, Harvard, Massachusetts, 2023
“Garden Loom” (2015), Roswell, New Mexico
Menlo Park, California
“A Moment in Time” (2022), Capri, Italy. Photo by Istanbul’74
Detail of installation at Mirror Lake, Bottomless Lakes State Park, New Mexico, 2015
“Cloud Report” (2021), South Dakota
South Dakota
Fairfield, Iowa
Flint Hills, Kansas
Greenwood, Missouri
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In a Baltimore Exhibition, the Transformative Potential of Today’s Griots Emerges
by Aurelia Butler 27 June 2025, 17:01
Alanis Forde, “A Sea Bath” (2023), oil on canvas, 25 x 20 inches. All images courtesy of the artists and Galerie Myrtis, shared with permission
In a Baltimore Exhibition, the Transformative Potential of Today’s Griots Emerges
June 27, 2025
Art
Grace Ebert
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Stories have long helped us to understand the world and our place within it. For the western Sahel in West Africa, storytellers known as griots are often responsible for sharing oral histories and local legends. As generations pass and culture shifts, griots add onto the narratives they’ve inherited with contemporary details relevant to their audiences.
A group exhibition curated by Noel Bedolla and Ky Vassor at Galerie Myrtis gathers a dozen international artists continuing this tradition. Emergence: Stories in the Making presents “a mirror to contemporary society” by positing that the narratives we tell play a critical role in collective experiences, acts of solidarity, and ultimately, societal progress.
Kachelle Knowles, “Queen’s College” (2025), graphite, decorative paper, colored pencils, thread, charcoal, acrylic paint, ink, acrylic gemstones, marker on paper, 28 x 18 inches. Image courtesy of the artist, Galerie Myrtis, and Tern Gallery
For Alanis Forde, imagining paradise and its trappings is a way to excavate questions about internal conflict. She often paints figures with blue masks and bodies, the vibrant disguises becoming proxies that allow the artist to merge her likeness with a fictive version of herself. Subverting the art historical and cultural representations of Black women “as objects of pleasure and servitude,” Forde shapes an alternative narrative.
Kachelle Knowles works in a parallel practice. Through mixed-media portraits with patterned paper, thread, and acrylic gems, the Bahamian artist focuses on Black teenagers and asserts their rights to fluid gender expressions.
While portraits feature prominently in Emergence, Kim Rice’s “American Quilt” invokes the politics of the body without visualizing a figure. Her large-scale tapestry is comprised of maps distributed by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, the defunct federal agency responsible for delineating which neighborhoods were too “hazardous” to receive mortgages in a racist process known as redlining. Stitched together with red thread, “American Quilt” makes explicit the ways that “whiteness is woven into our everyday lives,” Rice says.
If you’re in Baltimore, see Emergence: Stories in the Making through July 12.
Alanis Forde, “Garden Gloves” (2024), oil on canvas, 40 x 40 inches
Kim Rice, “American Quilt” (2025), HOLC “redlining” maps, acrylic gel, thread, 10 x 11 feet. Photo by Vivian Marie Doering
Kim Rice, “American Quilt” (2025), HOLC “redlining” maps, acrylic gel, thread, 10 x 11 feet. Photo by Vivian Marie Doering
Kim Rice, “American Quilt” (2025), HOLC “redlining” maps, acrylic gel, thread, 10 x 11 feet. Photo by Vivian Marie Doering
Unyime Edet, “Spirit To Spirit: The Night Watchers” (2024), oil on canvas, 55 x 59 inches
Damilare Jaimu, “All Things Bloom” (2025), oil and acrylic on canvas, 48 x 36 inches
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Alicja Kwade Reflects the Warped Nature of Time and Reality in Poetic Installations
by Aurelia Butler 25 June 2025, 21:04
Installation view of ‘Telos Tales’ (2025). All photos courtesy of Pace Gallery, shared with permission
Alicja Kwade Reflects the Warped Nature of Time and Reality in Poetic Installations
June 25, 2025
Art
Grace Ebert
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Square steel bars give way to knotted branches covered with patina in Alicja Kwade’s monumental meditation on time. Anchoring Telos Tales at Pace Gallery in New York is a sculpture in which architecture and nature converge.
Mirrored cylinders hang among the structures with distorted clock faces on their ends. Warping further as viewers move around the forms, these timepieces reflect the ways we are all bound up with the passing of the days. Time, Kwade suggests, skews our perceptions and realities and is only partially in our control. Whereas the city conforms to human design, nature doesn’t, and neither wholly does time.
“In Blur” (2022), powder-coated stainless steel, mirror, stones, objects, 410 x 4,700 x 13,300 centimeters. Photo by Lance Gerber
Born in Poland and now based in Berlin, Kwade (previously) is known for confronting long-held beliefs through sculptures, installations, film, photography, and more. Her preferred materials are minimal, including stainless steel and stone. Mirrors play an important role, too, and in large-scale works like “Duodecuple Be-Hide,” panels slot between granite and marble spheres and lookalikes of patinated bronze.
Much like Telos Tales, this sculpture utilizes these sleek reflective surfaces to call our perception into question. Altering the images they reveal depending on the viewer’s position, each mirror becomes a sort of portal in which the organic forms and bronze are replicated again and again, creating a seemingly endless array of alternate realities. A similar phenomenon occurs in “In Blur.” Surrounded by trees and stones in a desert, mirrored panels reflect the environment, while simultaneously hiding what lies behind.
“It’s very much about human nature, (the) nature of reality, how we understand our own world,” Kwade says about her recent work. “It questions what our position is in the structure of this universe we are kind of thrown into.”
Telos Tales is on view through August 15. Explore more of Kwade’s work on her website and Instagram.
Installation view of ‘Telos Tales’ (2025)
Installation view of ‘Telos Tales’ (2025)
Installation view of ‘Telos Tales’ (2025)
Installation view of ‘Telos Tales’ (2025)
“Duodecuple Be-Hide” (2020), granite, patinated bronze, mirror, marble, 110.4 x 225 x 225 centimeters. Photo by Roman März
“Duodecuple Be-Hide” (2020), granite, patinated bronze, mirror, marble, 110.4 x 225 x 225 centimeters. Photo by Roman März
“In Blur” (2022), powder-coated stainless steel, mirror, stones, objects, 410 x 4,700 x 13,300 centimeters. Photo by Lance Gerber
“Trans-For-Men 6” (2019), mirror, Carrara marble, concrete, granite, patinated bronze, bronze polished, stainless steel, 117 x 77 x 574.3 centimeters. Photo by Roman März, courtesy of the artist and KÖNIG Galerie
Detail of “Trans-For-Men 6” (2019), mirror, Carrara marble, concrete, granite, patinated bronze, bronze polished, stainless steel, 117 x 77 x 574.3 centimeters. Photo by Roman März, courtesy of the artist and KÖNIG Galerie
‘Blues Days Dust, Mennour’ (2024). Photo © Alicja Kwade, courtesy of Archives Mennour and the artist
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Roméo Mivekannin’s Cage-Like Sculptures of Museums Reframe the Colonial Past
by Aurelia Butler 24 June 2025, 15:49
Photos by Gerret Schultz. All images courtesy of the artist and Galerie Barbara Thumm, shared with permission
Roméo Mivekannin’s Cage-Like Sculptures of Museums Reframe the Colonial Past
June 24, 2025
ArtHistorySocial Issues
Kate Mothes
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Known for bold, chiaroscuro paintings that reimagine European art historical masterworks in his own likeness, Roméo Mivekannin is interested in the Western, colonial gaze on Africa and the power of archives to reveal underrepresented or untold stories. Born on the Ivory Coast, Mivekannin splits his time between Toulouse, France, and Cotonou, Benin. His practice interrogates visibility, appropriation, and power dynamics through direct and unflinching pieces spanning acrylic painting, installation, and sculpture.
At Art Basel last weekend, in collaboration with Galerie Barbara Thumm and Cécile Fakhoury, Mivekannin presented a large-scale installation titled Atlas, comprising a series of metal buildings suspended from the ceiling. Modeled after institutional buildings—in this case, museums that house enthographic collections—the artist draws attention to the colonialist practices and ethical gray areas that permeate these spaces and their histories.
Often founded upon controversial or dubiously-acquired personal collections of European urban elites, larger museums historically emphasized what was seen as “primitive” or “exotic,” exhibiting a skewed view of world cultures framed by a colonialist mindset. The British Museum, for example, was established in 1753 upon the death of Sir Hans Sloane, whose collection of more than 80,000 “natural and artificial rarities” provided the institution’s foundation. His wealth—and his collection—was amassed in part through enslaved labor on his sugar plantations in Jamaica.
Another well-known example of problematic collections include thousands of Benin Bronzes, housed in European institutions like the British Museum and others. British forces acquired many of these elaborately decorated plaques through pillage and looting in the late 19th century. Today, some museums have agreed to repatriate the bronzes to redress this historical indignity (the British Museum is still in discussions).
As a student of both art and architecture, Mivekannin taps into the way certain structures and built environments are designed to convey prestige and dominance. He is also currently pursuing a Ph.D. at the National Superior School of Architecture of Montpellier (ENSAM).
In Atlas, the structures take on the form of bird cages suspended from chains. Both elements symbolize captivity, likening ethnographic collections that often include human remains to what the Atlas exhibition statement describes as “human zoos.” In this context, the cages “serve as a reminder of the historical practices that sought to control and exploit ‘the Other.’”
Mivekannin bridges past and present in this installation, inviting viewers to walk around the museums within a space that shifts the power dynamic. The work encourages viewers “to confront uncomfortable truths about colonial legacies and their ongoing impact on our contemporary society.”
The artist scales down the museums’ palatial details to a diminutive size, displayed low, taking into consideration a kind of meta experience of the exhibition itself. In Mivekannin’s portrayal, the structures are both the cages and the caged.
A show of the artist’s paintings, Black Mirror, is currently on view at Collezione Maramotti in Reggio Emilia, Italy, through July 27. See more on the artist’s Instagram.
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More stories

Six Activist Trolls Tromp Through a California Woodland to ‘Save the Humans’

JR’s Tree of 10,000 Hands Takes Root in a Former Montpellier Church

Blackburn’s National Festival of Making Celebrates Collaborations Between Art and Industry

Site-Specific Textiles by Rachel B. Hayes Radiate Within Vast Landscapes and Sunlit Interiors

In a Baltimore Exhibition, the Transformative Potential of Today’s Griots Emerges

Alicja Kwade Reflects the Warped Nature of Time and Reality in Poetic Installations

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