Anel L. Flores
Pronouns: She/Her/Hers/They/Them/Their
Biography:
From the space between the Rio Grande Valle and San Antonio, Anel I. Flores’ craft continues the conversations birthed during the early Xicana/e/x movement in art and literature; now infused by latina/e/x, transfeminism, intersectionality, queer thought and resistencia. Her work combines, oscillates between, and blurs the disciplines of visual, literary and multidisciplinary presentations. She is founder and director of La Otra Taller Nepantla Residency, Queer Voices, Tierrita Grande and earned an MFA in Creative Writing. Her awards include Catalyst for Change, Best Local Poet, Women’s Advocate of the Year, the Nebrija Creadores Award, Best Of SA Author, Chingona in Literature Award, Ancinas Award at Squaw Valley, NALAC Fund for the Arts Award, Accion Women Inspiring Women & others. She is author of forthcoming book, Cortinas de Lluvia and author of award winning book and play, Empanada: A Lesbiana Story en Probaditas. Their work has been widely acknowledged with awards, invitational lectures, exhibitions, and publications.
Description of Work:
When queer people dream we stare into the sky, into the moon, into the water, into the openness of meditation. We stare onto the canvas, into the glitter of the dance floor. We flip through our mother’s closet, stomp onto the floor in our fathers hunting boots. We try on everything until it fits, until it drapes down our birthing vibrating body like a silk scarf. We step out into the surprises, on every edge of the atmosphere and imaginary. We step into the darkness and make friends with winged grandmothers who tell us how it used to be. We create our own playful monsters out of curtains of shooting stars, supers/heros from sprigs of lavender, use wands that shoot ocean waves to protect us from the drought of love trapped in old paradigms. We are queer. We are bursting, shifting in a new paradigm. We are here and we are dancing behind our curtain of stars.
Antonio Briones III
Pronouns: He/ Him
Biography:
My name is Antonio Briones III, Tony for short. I am a public artist and native of Laredo, Texas. I have been a public artist for the last 25 yrs, an artist for the last 33 yrs. I also was an art teacher for 17 yrs.
I have been influenced by art since I can remember at an early age. My father, Antonio Briones, Jr, would send me artwork he would create when he was in prison. I used to be amazed on how he would blend his colors, how he would paint all these different textures on his canvas. My grandfather, Jose Angel San Miguel, my mom’s Dad, was a sign painter. I would spend countless hours watching him paint his signs and logos in the back yard under a big tree, where we lived. I used to be hypnotized with the way he moved his brush when painting a letter. To this day I have not been able to recreate his talent.
After the military I joined the Art Institute of Houston and in 1991 I earned my Associates Degree in Visual Communication of the Applied Arts. I worked for several department stores as a visual display artist for 6 to 7 years before I started moving towards public art in 1995.
Website/Socials: www.instagram.com/starving_artist_66
Description of Work:
For the last 3 years I have dedicated my time as an activist and lead artist for four local organizations: No Border Wall Coalition, Rio Grande International Study Center, Laredo Immigrant Alliance, and Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas. It was important for me to participate and take action against the building of the racist border wall by the Trump Administration. These organizations have been battling the contamination and exploitation of our water, air, sacred land, and immigrant relatives. Even though Trump is not in office, the majority of the environmental laws that he changed and passed are still in place, so the fight continues.
I am a tribal member of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas. It is important to me that we change the narrative, and protect our sacred lands, protect our water, protect our air, and protect our immigrant relatives.
Josue Ramirez
Pronouns: He/ Him
Biography:
Josue Ramirez is a multidisciplinary artist living and practicing in Esto’k Gna land along the Rio Grande on the Texas Mexico border. He is inspired by the Rio Grande landscapes, its visual language and everyday practices. Ramirez was the RGV Co-director for Texas Houser’s and a Program Coordinator at come dream. come build. Much of his art builds on his previous policy and organizing experience around fair housing and land use. His artwork has been featured in the Mingei Museum, MexicArte, Art League Houston, and the Craft in America Center. He is a Co-founder of Trucha, a multimedia organization where he currently serves as the Managing Director.
Website/Socials: www.truchargv.com
Description of Work:
Bajo el mismo techo, 2023, installation, found objects, dimensions vary
The installation consists of mirroring bandit signs that are made to resemble roofs. They symbolize various themes including rising housing prices, upward social movement, increasing insecurity and shelter.
House not home, 2023, found objects, dimensions vary.
An assemblage of bandit signs and title loan signs made to resemble a house with a sidewalk. It is an allusion to the different abusive practices that negatively impact individuals' financial security and dreams of homeownership.
Greetings from New Space City, 2022, digital image on plastic.
Fake advertising for the rebranding of the City of Brownsville.
Boca Chica Boom, 2023, digital video collage in loop, collaboration with Omar Casas.
Distorted video of SpaceX explosion at Boca Chica.
ENTRE
Biography:
ENTRE is an artist-run community film center and regional archive that focuses on the creation, exhibition, and preservation of community-made cinema, documentary, video art, and other forms of alternative cinematic expression. Located in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas, ENTRE’s mission is to provide access, knowledge, and skills in filmmaking and archival practices, inviting more voices to document, share and preserve the vast narrative of US/Mexico border communities.
Website / Socials: www.entrefilmcenter.org
Description of work:
Boca Chica, Corazón Grande
Boca Chica, Corazón Grande is a community archival project focused on collecting and documenting the history and geography of Boca Chica Beach. This collaborative initiative uses the power of memory, storytelling, and archiving to preserve and celebrate the cultural richness of our communities and land. This project is facilitated by Flower Friends, a floral exchange and mutual aid initiative based in San Antonio/Brownsville, Texas, and ENTRE, an artist-run community film center and regional archive located in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas. Flower Friends and ENTRE are inviting community members to submit physical home movies, photographs, and/or historical documents centered around your experience of Boca Chica Beach. This open call is for materials that capture family, community, nature, landscape and/or features of the beach.
Self-Service Oral History Station :
In an effort to collect memories of Boca Chica Beach, ENTRE created a portable audio-recordingstation so people can record short stories and memories of Boca Chica at their leisure.Instructions are available in both English and Spanish and can be found by the recording station.By participating in this process, narrators consent to have their stories included in ENTRE'sarchive where the recordings will be transcribed, translated and available for public access. Ifyou do not want your story to be available to the public but still remain in the archive, please contact us at: info@entrefilmcenter.org
Cuentos y Corrientes
5 minutes, regular 8mm film transferred to digital, black and white.10 minute soundscape. 5minutos, filme en 8mm transferido a digital, blanco y negro. Paisaje Sonoro 10 minutos
An experimental film and soundscape of Boca Chica Beach, captured on February 26, 2023.Shot on regular 8mm black & white reversal stock, partially processed using plants (Plainscoreopsis, Shoreline Purslane, Annual Sea-blite, Virginia glasswort, and American searocket),sand, seashells, and water all collected from the area at Boca Chica Beach where the RioGrande River empties into the Gulf of Mexico. Field recordings captured using directional andcontact microphones. Film shot by C. Díaz and Andres Sanchez. Film processed and edited byC. Díaz. Sound recorded and assembled by Andres Sanchez.
Futuro Conjunto
Biography:
Charlie Vela is a record producer, cultural historian, and active multimedia artist in the Rio Grande
Valley. Vela has produced hundreds of albums for artists in and beyond the border region, as well
as co-directed the award-winning music documentary As I Walk Through the Valley, co-created
Futuro Conjunto, a multimedia sci-fi cast album, and, in his alter-ego Fronterawave, has remixed
and re-contextualized regional music using contemporary production aesthetics. Charlie has
dedicated the better part of the last two decades to preserving local histories and facilitating
creative visions in South Texas.
Jonathan Leal is an author, composer, and researcher based in Los Angeles, California. Originally from the Rio Grande Valley, Leal works as an artist-scholar to create writing and collaborative arts projects that grapple with issues of borders and memory, place and belonging. His musical projects have been featured in Pitchfork, Democracy Now!, Texas Monthly, Remezcla, Latino USA, and elsewhere, and his writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Rumpus, San Francisco Classical Voice, and elsewhere. He is the author of Dreams in Double Time (forthcoming August 2023 from Duke University Press) and co-editor of Cybermedia: Explorations in Science, Sound, and Vision (Bloomsbury 2021). Leal holds a PhD in Modern Thought & Literature from Stanford University and is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Southern California.
Website/Socials: www.futuroconjunto.com
Description of work:
Futuro Conjunto is a transmedia musical project that imagines a possible future for the Rio Grande Valley. This immersive physical exhibit at Nuestra Delta Mágica invites visitors to explore the world of the album, and to imagine their own new future possibilities.
Turning to the corrido tradition for inspiration, Futuro Conjunto imagines over one hundred years of future history for the border region, exploring issues of class struggle and astro-capitalist greed, climate disaster and artificial intelligence, and documented history and communal memory. Fundamentally, it offers a critical response to colonialist temporality, imagining instead a tomorrow built from within. Co-written by Charlie Vela and Jonathan Leal in 2019–2020, the project unfolds across musical,visual, and textual media, and it features creative contributions by over thirty borderlands artists.
Bonnie Ilza Cisneros
Biography:
Born in Brownsville and raised in San Antonio, Bonnie Ilza Cisneros is a fourth-generation Tejana educator in a line of South Texas teachers. Bonnie holds a Creative Writing MFA from Texas State University, is a member of the Macondo Writers Workshop, and was awarded a NALAC artist grant in 2018. She received a 2023 Individual Artist Grant from the City of San Antonio to archive, exhibit, and celebrate Siempre Verde: Música for Feeling & Healing, an interdisciplinary pandemic project at Evergreen Garden. Moonlighting as DJ Despeinada, she spins all-vinyl soundscapes of the borderlands and consciously centers women and BIPOC musicians in her sets. Bonnie’s poems and essays appear in El Retorno, Chicana/Latina Studies, Porter House Review, Buckman Journal, River Teeth, and El Placazo Barrio Newspaper. Her essay, “The Ana Files” was anthologized in Contemporary Creative Nonfiction, and she led a series of memoir workshops entitled Altar-ing at San Antonio and Chicago Public Libraries. Bonnie curates cultural events, teaches workshops, publishes zines, presents lectures,
records radio shows, builds altares, and raises two m’ijas and a flock of five gallinas with her husband in San Antonio, Texas. Her digital archive is
Website/Socials: www.bonniecisneros.com
Description of work:
Ilza Villarreal Blankenship
b. 1960 Brownsville, Texas
1. Net of Memories
acrylic yarn (colorways: Sandy Shells; stitch: Crooked Hearts) & Texas Gulf Coast seashells 60” x 80”
2023
Throughout the crocheted net I hand-sewed common bivalve seashells collected at the Texas Gulf Coast over the years by my granddaughters and me. I taught them to always pick up shells with a hole so we can string them onto necklaces later. If you look closely, you’ll notice that the net is made up of holes that are semi heart-shaped, crooked corazoncitos, which symbolize our love for the Gulf coast beaches that have suffered decades of immeasurable chemical pollution, oil spills, rocket debris, and thoughtless littering, yet remain places of healing beauty and spiritual sanctuary for the families of South Texas and Mexico.
2. Ocean of Dreams
acrylic yarn (colorways: Turquoise, Aquamarine, Twinkle; Stitches: Lacey Waves & Love Knot & Improvised Seafoam Stitch)
Dimensions: 60” x 60”
2023
While the sparkly white yarn was an easy choice for the frothy ocean waves, Bonnie and I took hours to pick the color for the ocean. We wanted a jewel tone blue that mirrors the way the Gulf can look on a perfect day, not quite aqua and not quite turquoise, a Boca Chica Blue. If you look closely, you see two slightly different shades. While I was working, I made a chart to guide color placement and abbreviated them T for turquoise and A for aqua. When I looked at the order, I was astonished to see that the pattern spelled out T-A-T-A over and over. Tata is the name Bonnie gave my mother, who taught us to revere the ocean and who died four years ago on April 1. I feel like this was a signal from my mom that she is proud that we are telling our Tejana stories in the form of creative projects.
For the seafoam, we found an ancient stitch called Love Knot, which reminded us of sailors, but once I got crocheting, I got flooded in memories of floating on the waves at Boca Chica, South Padre, and Port Aransas, and the stitch changed into an original, improvised pattern that represents my love for my parents, children, and all my good friends in Brownsville who cherish our beaches as much as I do.
Bonnie Ilza Cisneros Villarreal
(b. 1978, Brownsville, Texas)
Padre_Land:
Altar Installation for Salvador Alberto Villarreal Sosa & Sergio Angel Cisneros Orive
archival digital collages/”memory memes” printed on canvas paper, bisabuela’s bedroom mirror frames, plexiglass, heirloom nopales from 445 E. Park Drive & Rancho La Noria Cardeneña in thrifted souvenir mugs, cositas, antique shelf, mama’s commissioned crocheted textiles, LED string lights.
Dimensions: 5’ wide, 8’ tall
2023
Within the span of five months in 2004-2005, two men died in their hometown of Brownsville, Texas, where they both are buried at Buena Vista. As Sergio’s only hija and Salvador’s favorite sobrina, their deaths shrouded me in a susto that I have never fully shaken. Certs and Salvo, as they were known, led lives fraught with wild chaos, fateful choices, and tragic consequences, but they never gave up on their spiritual quests for redemption. They are borderland archetypes whose destinies were altered by intergenerational trauma and borderland violence, mental illness and substance abuse, U.S. military service, and the prison industrial complex.
But we loved them.
My archives overflow with traces of their guidance and prayers in the form of handwritten letters, inscribed photographs, and thoughtful gifts. For Nuestra Delta Mágica, my mother and I created an altar installation to remember Sergio and Salvador and continue healing with our on-going collaborative creative expressions. There was a point when I felt the undertow of sadness pull me under again, but with the help of my mom, husband, daughters, and comadres, I swam harder, parallel to the seashore. Now I see how this project falls in line with the traditions of Tejanas who create sanctuary in their casitas and gardens, build altares y ofrendas, collect and archive cositas y papelitos, take great pleasure in domestic aesthetics, and express cultural identity through personal style.
My father and tío have been gone for almost 20 years, but Padre_Land is an altar to their love that never left us.
Xandra Treviño
Pronouns: She / They
Biography:
Xandra Treviño (she/they) is a lifelong resident of Brownsville, Texas (lifelong neighbor to the Rio Grande River) who aims to present the experiences of brown/trans/disabled people living in border town communities. She is an artist, writer, and illustrator. Much of her work has focused on creating spaces where people can communicate their needs and learn from one another. Xandra is the co-founder of the Radical Library, a small independent library that brings more access to critical thinking resources, books and literature that address social issues from the root. She is a Reclaiming the Border Narrative fellow, awarded by the National Association of Latino Arts and the Ford Foundation. Her narrative change project is called Palmas del Valle, a podcast series that centers and uplifts the grassroots work in the Rio Grande Valley currently in production. Xandra holds a bachelor’s in English from the University of Texas Brownsville.
Link: https://myrgv.com/local-news/2021/08/24/radical-library-popup-bookcase-offers-diverse-authors/
Photo Credit: Denise Cathey Brownsville Herald
