Latina Women’s Art at the Forefront at Mujeres de Aztlán Exhibition.

The 16th Annual Mujeres de Aztlán Exhibition, “Mujeres Artistas: Iluminando El Futuro,” opened with an electrifying reception on Saturday, March 8 at the San Antonio Centro Cultural Aztlan. A near overflow crowd gathered around inspiring art as famed Tejana accordionist Eva Ybarra and her conjunto band provided entertainment.

Liliana Wilson. “Migrante en la Cuerda.” Courtesy of the Centro Cultural Aztlan. Photo by Ricardo Romo.

Over the past year, the Centro has added two new gallery spaces which allow for more artist participation and contribute to a better spatial flow. Malena Gonzalez-Cid noted that larger space enabled the Centro to add additional artwork that could be sold to support the artists and the ongoing art activities of the Centro. The new gallery space gave this year's curators Dolores Garcia and lead artist Liliana Wilson sufficient room to present paintings, prints, and sculptures by 43 Mujeres Artistas.

Margaret Garcia, “De Mis Raices.” Courtesy of the Centro Cultural Aztlan. Photo by Ricardo Romo.

Patssi Valdez and Margaret Garcia are from the first generation of California Chicana artists, and their work was included in this year’s exhibit. Dolores Garcia and her husband Gilbert Cardenas of Austin contributed several works from their collection to the Centro exhibit. One stunning piece was by Los Angeles native Patssi Valdez, a founding member of Asco artist collective. She has been awarded a Brody Art Fellowship in Visual Arts (1988), an artist-in-residence grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (1994), and a J. Paul Getty fellowship. Her work in the Centro show, “Forbidden Fruit,” was printed at UT Austin in 1991. Another memorable piece was by Los Angeles artist Margaret Garcia. Garcia studied art in Southern California colleges in the early 1970s and participated in the Los Angeles Citywide Mural Program in 1978.

Naxieli Gomez, [Floral series]. Courtesy of the Centro Cultural Aztlan. Photo by Ricardo Romo.

Austinite Dolores Garcia has organized exhibits at La Pena and contributed to art shows at Austin's Mexican American Cultural Center. Garcia brought the works by Patssi Valdez and Margaret Garcia as well as other major art pieces from the Garcia-Cardenas collection to the show. Others included were Connie Arismendi, Cristina Cárdenas, Sandra Fernandez, Scherezade Garcia, Mary Jane Garza, and Julia Santos Solomon.

Suzy Gonzalez, “Manos y Rosas.” Courtesy of the Centro Cultural Aztlan. Photo by Ricardo Romo.

Lead artist Liliana Wilson contributed her own splendid painting to the exhibit. A Chilean-born Latina artist, Wilson is currently based in Boerne, Texas. Her best known works portray immigrants and working-class people engaged in everyday activities. Her painting for the Centro depicts a young girl with bright red butterfly wings walking on a tightrope. Young people too often face difficult decisions, but they persevere. Wilson gave the young girl wings in an effort to reduce the risks.

Tejana artist Santa Barraza brought a new painting, “Toros de La Guadalupe with the Holy Spirit,” to the Centro for the Annual Mujeres de Aztlán Exhibition. Barraza has a long association with San Antonio. A native of Kingsville, Texas, Barraza was studying at the University of Texas at Austin in the mid-1970s when she joined Los Quemados, a San Antonio Chicano arts organization that included Cesar Martinez and Carolina Flores. In 1976, she left Los Quemados and was a co-founder of Mujeres Artistas del Suroeste [MÁS]. The MAS artists joined Women and Their Work, Inc. in 1976 to inaugurate one of the nation’s first Chicana feminist art festivals, Encuentro Femenil, in Austin.

Santa Barraza, “Toros of La Guadalupe with the Holy Spirit.” Courtesy of the Centro Cultural Aztlan. Photo by Ricardo Romo.

Santa Barraza’s earliest international art recognition was at a 1983 exhibit in Mexico City, “A Traves de la Frontera.” That show traveled to all of Mexico’s border towns, including Tijuana, Juarez, and Matamoros. In the late 1990s, Barraza returned to San Antonio to paint a major mural on the outside wall of the Science Building at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Gloria Sanchez Hart, “Las Muchachas de la Calle.” Courtesy of the Centro Cultural Aztlan. Photo by Ricardo Romo.

In addition to Barraza, prominent “Veteranas” in the exhibition included Veronica Castillo, Carolina Flores, and Kathy Vargas. Among the non-Texans are Sandra Fernandez, Margaret Garcia, Patssi Valdez, Julia Santos Solomon, Scherezade Garcia, and Cristina Cardenas.

Julia Santos Solomon, “Sheila E.” Courtesy of the Centro Cultural Aztlan. Photo by Ricardo Romo.

Santos Solomon, a native of the Dominican Republic, came to the United States in 1966 at the age of ten. She studied art at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design. Her work is profoundly influenced by her Caribbean heritage and immigrant experience. Known for her use of vibrant colors, her spectacular rendition of “Sheila E.” playing the drums was especially popular among those at the Centro Cultural Aztlan who follow Latin music. Solomon has exhibited widely including in US shows at the Hudson River Museum, New York and internationally in the Museum of Modern Art, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

Cristina Cardenas is a native of Guadalajara, Mexico and has lived and worked in Tucson, Arizona since the mid 1990s. Her art explores themes of women’s empowerment and political issues and pays tribute to Mexican and Mexican American culture. She was chosen for a Kellogg Foundation residency in Caversham, South Africa and is a founding member of Raices Taller, an intergenerational cooperative art gallery and workshop in Tucson. She earned a Bachelor’s degree from the Universidad de Guadalajara and a Master of Fine Arts in Printmaking from the University of Arizona.

Veronica Castillo. Courtesy of the Centro Cultural Aztlan. Photo by Ricardo Romo.

Veronica Castillo is a native of the state of Puebla, Mexico. Her family, the Castillo Orta, is renowned for their mastery of multicolored clay ceramics and iconic "Tree of Life" sculptures. Castillo, who began creating her own artwork at age 16, came to San Antonio in her early 20s and now has a studio and gallery in Southtown San Antonio. Castillo is a master artist and teacher. Over the past two decades, she has taught over 200 women the art of ceramics. Her story was recently featured in the new book titled "Rooted in Clay: Verónica Castillo y su arte" by Dr. Josie Méndez-Negrete.

Verónica Castillo’s new work for the Centro exhibit places a seated dark woman wearing only a white veil in front of a twisted tree of life. The tree branches host bright red, yellow, and blue flowers surrounded by colorful birds and butterflies. In 2013, the prestigious National Endowment for the Arts presented Castillo with the National Heritage Fellowship Award for her contributions to folk art. She has exhibited her work internationally in prestigious museums such as the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and the Fowler Museum at UCLA.

Scherezade Garcia, “The Sound of the Rain in the Tropics.” Courtesy of the Centro Cultural Aztlan. Photo by Ricardo Romo.

The artwork of Scherezade Garcia, a native of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, always illuminates gallery walls. Garcia, an internationally acclaimed painter, printmaker, and installation artist, teaches at UT Austin and lives part of the year in Brooklyn, New York. Her work in this exhibit, “The Sound of the Rain in the Tropics,” portrays a Caribbean scene in blue with rain falling on a stream filled with tropical plants. A book on her art, Scherezade García: From This Side of the Atlantic, was published in 2020. Garcia is part of permanent collections at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Art Museum of the Americas, and the UT Blanton Museum of Art.

Maria and Manola Ramirez. Courtesy of the Centro Cultural Aztlan. Photo by Ricardo Romo.

The forty-three artists who participated in this year’s Mujeres de Aztlán Exhibition, “Mujeres Artistas: Iluminando El Futuro,” gave viewers a broad perspective of the direction of Latina art in Texas. Every piece had a unique narrative but themes of identity, immigration, and work emerged in many works. Kudos to the Centro’s leaders for assuring that every year the annual Mujeres exhibit rises to new and superior heights.