• Home
    • Get the Podcasts
    • About
      • Contact Latinopia.com
      • Copyright Credits
      • Production Credits
      • Research Credits
      • Terms of Use
      • Teachers Guides
  • Art
    • LATINOPIA ART
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Film/TV
    • LATINOPIA CINEMA
    • LATINOPIA SHOWCASE
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Food
    • LATINOPIA FOOD
    • COOKING
    • RESTAURANTS
  • History
    • LATINOPIA EVENT
    • LATINOPIA HERO
    • TIMELINES
    • BIOGRAPHY
    • EVENT PROFILE
    • MOMENT IN TIME
    • DOCUMENTS
    • TEACHERS GUIDES
  • Lit
    • LATINOPIA WORD
    • LATINOPIA PLÁTICA
    • LATINOPIA BOOK REVIEW
    • PIONEER AMERICAN LATINA AUTHORS
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Music
    • LATINOPIA MUSIC
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Theater
    • LATINOPIA TEATRO
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Blogs
    • Angela’s Photo of the Week
    • Arnie & Porfi
    • Bravo Road with Don Felípe
    • Burundanga Boricua
    • Chicano Music Chronicles
    • Fierce Politics by Dr. Alvaro Huerta
    • Mirándolo Bien with Eduado Díaz
    • Political Salsa y Más
    • Mis Pensamientos
    • Latinopia Guest Blogs
    • Tales of Torres
    • Word Vision Harry Gamboa Jr.
    • Julio Medina Serendipity
    • ROMO DE TEJAS
    • Sara Ines Calderon
    • Ricky Luv Video
    • Zombie Mex Diaries
    • Tia Tenopia
  • Podcasts
    • Louie Perez’s Good Morning Aztlán
    • Mark Guerrero’s Chicano Music Chronicles
      • Yoga Talk with Julie Carmen

latinopia.com

Latino arts, history and culture

  • Home
    • Get the Podcasts
    • About
      • Contact Latinopia.com
      • Copyright Credits
      • Production Credits
      • Research Credits
      • Terms of Use
      • Teachers Guides
  • Art
    • LATINOPIA ART
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Film/TV
    • LATINOPIA CINEMA
    • LATINOPIA SHOWCASE
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Food
    • LATINOPIA FOOD
    • COOKING
    • RESTAURANTS
  • History
    • LATINOPIA EVENT
    • LATINOPIA HERO
    • TIMELINES
    • BIOGRAPHY
    • EVENT PROFILE
    • MOMENT IN TIME
    • DOCUMENTS
    • TEACHERS GUIDES
  • Lit
    • LATINOPIA WORD
    • LATINOPIA PLÁTICA
    • LATINOPIA BOOK REVIEW
    • PIONEER AMERICAN LATINA AUTHORS
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Music
    • LATINOPIA MUSIC
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Theater
    • LATINOPIA TEATRO
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Blogs
    • Angela’s Photo of the Week
    • Arnie & Porfi
    • Bravo Road with Don Felípe
    • Burundanga Boricua
    • Chicano Music Chronicles
    • Fierce Politics by Dr. Alvaro Huerta
    • Mirándolo Bien with Eduado Díaz
    • Political Salsa y Más
    • Mis Pensamientos
    • Latinopia Guest Blogs
    • Tales of Torres
    • Word Vision Harry Gamboa Jr.
    • Julio Medina Serendipity
    • ROMO DE TEJAS
    • Sara Ines Calderon
    • Ricky Luv Video
    • Zombie Mex Diaries
    • Tia Tenopia
  • Podcasts
    • Louie Perez’s Good Morning Aztlán
    • Mark Guerrero’s Chicano Music Chronicles
      • Yoga Talk with Julie Carmen
You are here: Home / Blogs / RICARDO ROMO’S TEJANO REPORT 04.03.22

RICARDO ROMO’S TEJANO REPORT 04.03.22

April 3, 2022 by Tia Tenopia

Nansi Guevara, Guillermina Zabala, and Catherine
Cisneros at the 2022 MASA Exhibit

By Dr. Ricardo Romo

Nansi Guevara. Detail of “The deal that only benefits the rich.” Photo by Ricardo Romo.

Nansi Guevara described herself artistically as a “graphic designer, an illustrator, and a textile/rasquachebased public artist.” Born in Laredo, Guevara moved to Brownsville after earning a bachelor’s in Fine Arts in Design from the University of Texas at Austin and a Master’s in Education from Harvard University. She runs her own freelance design and education practice, Corazón Contento, based out of Brownsville, Texas.

A New York Times article on border art by Siddhartha Mitter on Sunday, March 27 may well explain how artists like Nansi Guevara approach complex social subjects. Mitter writes about border towns’ particular spirit: “Because sociology can go only so far in accounting for a place, it has fallen to artists to explore and convey…the borderness of it all…” Guevara, who grew up in the border town of Laredo, explained that her artwork and social practice “is especially place-based.” She is now focusing on arts-based popular education and design to begin and continue to unveil the excellence, talent, and strength of American border communities.

I spoke recently to Guevara about her exhibit with Project MASA at the Centro Cultural Aztlan in San Antonio and her interest in aliens and space travel. She observed that a billionaire company had brought the Space X project to Boca Chica Beach, located 30 miles outside of Brownsville, Texas. The consequences have been disastrous for nearly all the long-time residents of that beach community.

Guevara explained: “As I visit the once undisturbed beach, I notice the changes. Rows of monotone houses, silver rockets, brown workers welding, white men in binoculars, a border patrol checkpoint, and a billionaire’s vision of the future. New employees are finding comfort in the cheap prices of houses and land, furthering their own american [sic] dream and nuclear family ideals”

Nansi Guevara, Space X Installation altar. Photo by Ricardo Romo.

Guevara’s MASA installation pieces include an altar where she created a replica of the standing Virgen altar next to Boca Chica beach and the Space X launch site. “The centerpiece above” she added, “represents the changing aesthetics of SpaceX colonization. It is a mirror into what I have witnessed in the changing landscape throughout these past three years. On the left and right are photo collages showing our relationship to the beach but also the surveillance of the beach both by Space X and Border Patrol.”

The Virgen altar, Guevara noted, “is the only piece still standing that gives me hope that this beach and its wildlife will stay protected.”

II. Guillermina Zabala

Born in Argentina, Guillermina Zabala attended a fine arts high school near Buenos Aires where she excelled in printmaking. Wishing to grow artistically, she immigrated to the United States in the early 1990s enrolling at Columbia College in Los Angeles where she studied film. Following her graduation from Columbia College, she worked in the film industry in Los Angeles. Zabala moved to San Antonio in 2005 to accept the position of Media Arts Director at the art education
program, SAY Si. As a media instructor in the SAY Si middle school and high school program, Zabala teaches photography and filmmaking ranging from 16 mm film format to digital video and multimedia. Zabala is active in the San Antonio arts community.

Several years ago she was invited as the Guest Artist at the McNay Art Museum. She returned that year for a Solo Exhibition at the McNay Octagon Gallery with her one-channel video “I, Me, Light.” She explained that her exhibit highlighted forty San Antonio individuals and asked them to define who they are in one word.

Guillermina Zabala. “Lukutuwe Series.” Photo by Ricardo Romo.

Zabala explained that in her creative works, she seeks to bring out the “friction and subtle balance between beauty and discomfort.” She defines beauty as “the perfect composition and aesthetics” and “discomfort” as her reaction to the lack of justice in society. She sums up her art as her “way of detecting beauty and experimenting with it.” She added that her art is also “my therapy and my way of refusing to accept those injustices as unavoidable and necessary.” Zabala’s art examines the intersection between individuals and their social-political-cultural environments.

Her prints in the MASA exhibit, which she calls the “Lukutuwe Series,” are inspired by the culture and ideology of the Mapuche Indians, the largest indigenous
population of the regions of Chile and Argentina. The Mapuches weave their own fabrics, utilizing colorful thread and geometrical figures. Zabala noted that her “prints are inspired by the shapes, colors, and aesthetics of Mapuches’ textiles.” Her three prints in red, green, and blue featured in the Project MASA exhibit “explore the shapes and patterns of the textiles made by the Mapuches, especially the fajas (belts) made by the women.”

Recently, Guillermina’s feature documentary Juanito’s Lab was selected to be the opening film at the 42nd CineFestival in San Antonio.

III. Catherine Cisneros

Catherine Cisneros has devoted the past 40 years to dance, percussion music, and visual arts. Cisneros’s unique costumes, assemblages, and lighting designs have been a featured part of the San Antonio Fiesta Flambeau Parades for 33 years. As the Artistic Director of Urban-15, Cisneros has taken her company to several international festivals in Mexico and to three presidential inaugurations over the past twenty years. Cisneros studied at the University of Texas at Austin
Art Department completing her degree in 1975. She co-founded URBAN-15 in 1974. She returned to her art studies in 1978 enrolling in the University of Houston Sculpture Department. Following her graduation in 1979, she performed professionally with several modern dance groups.

Although Cisneros is well known nationally in the Latino dance community, she also utilizes her training as a visual artist and sculptor to create sculpture works. In the MASA exhibit, Cisneros created a sculpture, “Martian Merengue,” incorporating multiple years of performance costumes worn by URBAN-15’s dancers and drummers in the Fiesta Flambeau Parades. In particular, the sculpture includes a bright fabric star worn for President Barack Obama’s Inaugural Parade in 2009.

Catherine Cisneros, “Martian Merengue” at MASA, Centro Cultural Aztlan. Photo by Ricardo Romo

As a visual artist, Cisneros enjoys designing and making things. Additionally, she dances and creates choreography on a regular basis. Finally, she loves music
and plays percussion.

Cisneros sees her work in Urban-15 as transforming the San Antonio community through a philosophy of inclusion that breaks prejudicial barriers of size, age,
gender, class, religion, ethnicity, and race. The group targets economic and social disparity revolutionizing access to music, movement, and media. The Centro Cultural Aztlan exhibit, Project MASA, includes many talented San Antonio artists and should be well-received by the entire South Texas community.
*Special thanks to Luis Valderas and Malena Gonzalez-Cid

____________________________________________________________

Copyright 202 by Ricardo Romo. All photos by Ricardo Romo as noted.

Filed Under: Blogs, Ricardo Romo's Tejano Report Tagged With: Catherine Cisneros, Dr. Ricardo Romo, Guillermina Zabala, Nansi Guevara, Ricardo Romo's Tejano Report

POLITICAL SALSA Y MÁS with SAL BALDENEGRO 05.21.23 “ADALBERTO “BETO” GUERRERO

May 20, 2022 By wpengine

History surrounds us… Again, I will forego writing about political issues. Instead, I will try to do justice to a history maker, someone whose advocacy had national implications, someone I was privileged to have as a mentor – Adalberto “Beto” Guerrero. We are surrounded by history makers. Every community has them. Adalberto “Beto” Guerrero is […]

RICARDO ROMO’S TEJANO REPORT 05.06.22 FIDENCIO DURAN

May 6, 2022 By wpengine

Fidencio Duran: A Painter Who Captures Latino Culture and Traditions in Everyday Life Texas artist Fidencio Duran has been climbing tall scaffolds since he won a commission to complete a mural in Brownsville, Texas thirty-seven years ago. Today, Duran’s murals are among the most visible for any Latino artist in America. On an annual basis […]

RICARDO ROMO’S TEJANO REPORT 05.13.22 CARLOS ROSALES-SILVA

May 13, 2022 By wpengine

Carlos Rosales-Silva’s Abstract Imagery Captures Latino Culture Carlos Rosales-Silva, a resident of New York City for the past decade, relies on memory, photographs, and historical accounts of his native West Texas community to create art that represents a visual narrative of nature, people, architecture, and objects of a dynamic American borderland region. His art is […]

BURUNDANGA BORICUA DEL ZOCOTROCO 04.30.22

April 30, 2022 By wpengine

Burundanga de Zocotroco José M. Umpierre La atención pública en la Isla del Encanto en los últimos tiempos ha estado enfocada en la determinación del tribunal Supremo Federal en cuanto a la aplicabilidad de Seguridad de Ingreso Suplementario (SSI) a los ciudadanos residente en Puerto Rico. El caso trata de José Luis Vaello Madero al […]

More Posts from this Category

New On Latinopia

LATINOPIA WORD ROLANDO HINOJOSA “KLAIL CITY”

By Tia Tenopia on April 15, 2013

Dr. Rolando Hinojosa Smith is a pioneering Chicano author whose writings transcend genres. His novel “Klail City” won the prestigious Casa de las Americas literary award. Hinojosa has created the fictional world of Klail City located in fictional Belkin County, Texas. His writings draw on his experiences growing up in the Rio Grande valley of […]

Category: LATINOPIA WORD, Literature

LATINOPIA FOOD “JALAPEÑO SODA BREAD” RECIPE

By Tia Tenopia on March 14, 2011

Jalapeño Irish Soda Bread The sweetness of traditional Irish soda bread ingredients—raisins, buttermilk, some sugar—are richly complimented by jalapeño heat. Here’s a soda bread recipe from Ireland brought to the USA from Galway by Mary Patricia Reilly Murray and later transformed  with her blessing by her daughter, Bobbi Murray, who added jalapeño chile.  A real […]

Category: Cooking, Food, LATINOPIA FOOD

LATINOPIA MUSIC ANGELA ROA “TOCO DESAFINADO”

By Tia Tenopia on June 22, 2014

Angela Roa is a Chilean singer and lyricist residing in Los Angeles, California. Her songs are about the Latino experience in the United States and in Latin America. Here she performs an original song, “Toco Desafinado” (Out of Tune). She is accompanied by Fernando Losada, Rich Silva and Thiago Winterstein..

Category: LATINOPIA MUSIC, Music

© 2022 latinopia.com · Pin It - Genesis - WordPress · Admin