ARTIST TALKS: RABÉA BALLIN & JOSHUA RIOS

Artists-in-residence Rabéa Ballin and Joshua Rios will each discuss their artistic practices, and address the questions Collective Presence curator Ashley DeHoyos asked them to consider when she invited them to participate in this project: How do forced or imposed changes like war, colonization, environmental crisis, and natural disasters change the landscape? And, what are current land politics affecting black, brown, and indigenous communities?

Rabéa Ballin’s work has explored culture through the lenses of drawing, painting, and sound while using research and inquisitive practices to unearth hidden histories. Ballin currently lives in Houston’s Historic Third Ward and is a professor of Fine Art at Lone Star College.

Joshua Rios is an educator, media artist, and writer whose projects deal with the histories, archives, and futurities of Latinx subjectivity and US/ Mexico relations as understood through the intersections of modernity, postmodernity, and neo-colonialism. Rios’s projects highlight moments of intercultural contact and co-belonging.