Latina Artists Santa Barraza and Kathy Vargas Honored with Prestigious Latinx Artist Fellowships.
Santa Barraza, “Emma Tenayuca.” Courtesy of the San Antonio Museum of Art. Photo by Ricardo Romo.
The Latinx Artist Fellowship announced this week an award of $50,000 each to a multi-generational cohort of 15 Latinx visual artists. Administered by the US Latinx Art Forum in collaboration with the New York Foundation for the Arts and supported by the Mellon Foundation and the Ford Foundation, this award celebrates the plurality and diversity of Latinx artists and aesthetics.
Santa Barraza. “La Mano Poderosa de Coyolxauhqui.” Courtesy of the artist.
The US Latinx Art Forum grants are important because these artists have made significant and vital contributions to American culture and “have lacked visibility and received little of the philanthropic or institutional support necessary to secure their place in the story of American art.” Among the 15 Latinx artists chosen for the 2025 awards are Tejana artists Santa Barraza and Kathy Vargas.
Santa Barraza, “La Malinche.” Courtesy of the artist.
Santa Contreras Barraza is an acclaimed contemporary Chicana/Tejana artist, educator, and art entrepreneur known for her vibrant, symbolic Texas-Mexico borderlands paintings that explore culture, identity, and spirituality. Drawing from her mestiza heritage, Indigenous ancestry, and pre-Columbian iconography, Barraza has become a leading figure in the Chicano art movement and one of the most celebrated visual artists of her generation.
Santa Barraza, “Frida con Tezcoatlipoca y Coyolxauhqui.” Courtesy of the artist.
Barraza began her academic journey at Texas A&I University (now Texas A&M University–Kingsville) in 1969 during a time of intense political activism inspired by the anti-Vietnam War movement, César Chávez’s farmworkers’ struggle, and the rise of “El Movimiento.” Immersed in the Chicano movement on campus, she found purpose in art as an instrument for cultural affirmation and social change. Because the Kingsville campus did not offer an art degree, she transferred to the University of Texas at Austin, where she earned her BFA in 1975 and MFA in 1982. She was one of only a few Chicana students in the university’s art department at the time.
Santa Barraza. Courtesy of US Latinx Art.
Barraza was deeply shaped by the cultural and political forces of the 1960s and 1970s. Her artwork embodies the concept of Nepantla—a mythic “land-between”—to explore the emotional, historical, and spiritual spaces where identities and traditions intersect. In 1976, while at UT Austin, Barraza joined the San Antonio-based Chicano arts collective Los Quemados, which included Cesar Martinez and Carolina Flores. She later co-founded Mujeres Artistas del Suroeste (MAS), a Chicana feminist art collective that organized Encuentro Femenil, one of the first Chicana feminist art festivals in the U.S.
Santa Barraza, “Nepantla.” courtesy of the artist.
Barraza’s paintings in the Mexico City exhibit A Través de la Frontera toured numerous Mexican border cities and enhanced her cross-border reputation. In 1990, her national breakthrough came with the selection of her artwork for Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation (CARA), a landmark traveling exhibit shown at major institutions including the Smithsonian. Her work was later featured in the Alma, Corazón y Vida exhibit in Rome (1991). In 2001, the book Santa Barraza: Artist of the Borderlands was published by Texas A&M University Press—the first scholarly monograph focused on a Chicana artist—and it won the Southwest Book Award in 2002.
Santa Barraza, “Toros of La Guadalupe with the Holy Spirit.” Courtesy of the Centro Cultural Aztlan. Photo by Ricardo Romo.
After early years as an college art educator in Chicago and Pennsylvania, Barraza returned to her hometown to teach art at Texas A&M University–Kingsville and established Barraza Fine Art, LLC, a gallery and studio dedicated to nurturing art in the South Texas borderlands and rural communities.
Barraza’s work was included in recent exhibitions, such as Traitor, Survivor, Icon: The Legacy of La Malinche (2022–2023) hosted at major museums in Denver,
Albuquerque, and San Antonio; Chicana/o Art Movimiento y Más at the Mexic-Arte Museum in Austin (2022); and Art in Embassies, a U.S. Department of State exhibition hosted by Ambassador Ken Salazar in Mexico City (2022–2025). In 2026, her work is slated to be included in a major exhibit, Frida: The Making of an Icon, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Barraza’s themes often include La Virgen de Guadalupe, La Malinche, La Llorona, labor leader Emma Tenayuca, and singer Selena. Her unique blends of retablo-style painting, codices, and pre-Columbian motifs often incorporate maize, nopales, maguey, and mesquite—plants sacred to her great-great-grandmother’s Indigenous Karankawa heritage. Barraza has spoken of feeling deeply rooted in the South Texas land: “The land feeds me physically and spiritually.” Santa Barraza’s commitment to preserving and celebrating Chicana/Tejana culture has made her an artistic trailblazer, mentor, and enduring inspiration to artists and communities across the Americas.
Kathy Vargas. Courtesy of US Latinx Art.
San Antonio native Kathy Vargas is a nationally recognized Chicana artist, photographer, curator, educator, and activist whose five decades-long career has left an indelible mark on contemporary photography and Mexican American art. Her technically innovative work explores the complex intersections of family, culture, memory, and religion. Through a unique blend of hand-colored silver gelatin prints, layered exposures, and symbolic imagery, Vargas has redefined the narrative power of photography in American art.
Kathy Vargas: Photographs, 1971-2000, a catalogue of an exhibition presented at the McNay Art Museum, edited by Lucy Lippard and Malin Wilson-Powell. Published by the McNay Museum, San Antonio. From the Romo collection.
Initially drawn to painting, Vargas enrolled at the Southwest School of Art and Craft in San Antonio but turned to photography—where she found her true calling. Studying with renowned rock-and-roll photographer Tom Wright, she learned the technical discipline and creative intensity the medium demanded. Vargas’s artistic development continued at San Antonio College with Mel Casas, a key figure in the Chicano art movement. From Casas, Vargas gained a deeper understanding of the political and cultural dimensions of art. Early in her career, Vargas worked as an arts journalist for the San Antonio Light, becoming one of the first writers to spotlight Chicano artists.
Kathy Vargas. Courtesy of Artpace and the artist. Photo by Ricardo Romo.
Vargas earned her BFA in 1981 and MFA in 1984 from the University of Texas at San Antonio, cementing her academic foundation in art. Her curatorial journey began in earnest in 1985, when she was named Visual Arts Program Director at the San Antonio Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, a position she held for 15 years. There, she worked alongside influential Mexican American cultural figures including Pedro Rodriguez, Sandra Cisneros, and Juan Tejeda, helping shape the city’s vibrant Latino arts landscape.
A major milestone came in 1996, when Vargas was selected for the prestigious Artpace Artist-in-Residence program. Since then, her work has been exhibited internationally, with solo exhibitions in Rome, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, and Germany, and in group shows including Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation (CARA) and Hospice: A Photographic Inquiry at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C.
Kathy Vargas. Courtesy of Artpace and the artist. Photo by Ricardo Romo.
Vargas’s photographs, often featuring meticulously composed images, layers of painted detail, and recurring symbols such as thorns, lace, and flowers, blend Catholic iconography with Mexican folklore, producing work that is at once intimate and universal. Her recent body of work, Light Needs Shadow Needs Light…, is a deeply personal and political meditation on life, love, death, and remembrance.
Kathy Vargas. Courtesy of Artpace and the artist. Photo by Ricardo Romo.
Vargas’s photographic proficiency is evident in her signature darkroom techniques: hand-coloring, multiple exposures, scratched negatives, and painterly brushstrokes, all of which create a visual chemistry that defies categorization. Her photographs serve not just as images, but as layered stories—acts of recollection, resistance, and celebration.
Her accolades are numerous. She was named Texas Two-Dimensional Artist of the Year in 2005 by the Texas Commission on the Arts and awarded San Antonio’s Medal of the Arts in 2019. Her work is featured in key publications, including Lucy Lippard’s Mixed Blessings and Paul Matte’s Open Aperture. Her papers are at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art. Vargas’s art is included in major collections at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Toledo Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, the Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City, the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, and the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio.
Since 2000, Vargas has served as Professor of Art/Photography at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, where she also chaired the department. As an educator, she continues to mentor new generations of artists and photographers, advocating for art as a tool for change and empowerment. Kathy Vargas remains an indispensable voice in Chicano, feminist, and American art. Her life’s work offers a compelling testimony to art’s power to heal, question, and illuminate.
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Copyright 2025 by Ricardo Romo. All photos copyrighted by Ricardo Romo or as indicated above.