Leading the Camino: Latinx Art by Juan de Dios Mora and Consuelo Jimenez Underwood

The exhibition Leading the Camino: Latinx Art by Juan de Dios Mora and Consuelo Jimenez Underwood, features prints and textiles by Mora and Jimenez Underwood that question borders and embrace living in the “borderlands.” Mora adopts figuration and humor to resist homogenization and contest political rhetoric that criminalizes immigrants. He employs Spanglish and popular motifs such as piñatas, luchadores masks, and Mesoamerican iconography to reflect his lived experiences and connect cultures across time and space. In his print Leading the Camino Maya and Aztec symbols are juxtaposed with tacos and technology exemplifying Gloria Anzaldúa’s notion of the borderlands or sites where a variety of traditions, languages, and ways of being come into contact, overlapping and interacting, to nourish and inform each other. Jimenez Underwood embraces textiles to similarly cross borders and honor her hybrid identity as Chicana, Mexicana, Americana, Indigenous, woman, and artist. Her artworks bridge art and craft to examine geo-political barriers and weave together bodies and traditions from past and present.

The exhibition is curated by Adriana Miramontes Olivas, Curator of Academic Programs and Latin American and Caribbean Art.