SITES OF MEMORY
Sites of Memory is an exhibition featuring newly commissioned and recent works by San Antonio-based artist Jenelle Esparza and Houston-based artist Verónica Gaona, who come together to explore the impermanent nature of land and its residual energy through the use of objects, land-based materials, and living and historical research. This exhibition builds on conversations between Esparza and Gaona as they work to further explore the impacts of migration, familial legacy, transnationality, migratory labor, and ideas related to rest.
Sites of Memory explores the relationship between the body, history, and land. It is the next iteration of Overlapping Territories, an ongoing project about interconnected relationships to land, curated by Ashley DeHoyos, who is working with artists to identify and trace a network of knowledge and experiences through public conversations, art, and interviews with other curators, cultural producers, and scholars from across the Southwest United States.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Jenelle Esparza (b. 1985) is an interdisciplinary artist who was born in the coastal city of Corpus Christi, TX. She attended the University of Texas at San Antonio and received her BFA in photography in 2010. Esparza examines the lesser-known history of cotton and labor in South Texas through photography and textiles and incorporates concepts of body movement, history, gender, identity, culture, and race. Her recent projects consider the intersections of Mexican and American culture and the implications of generational trauma. In El Color de la Obra (2016), Esparza used photography, two-way mirrors, and bronze cotton plants to examine the interconnected histories of South Texas cotton fields and began her exploration into this history which runs several generations deep in her family. Her recent projects utilize textiles and found objects as representations of the body in labor and movement. Esparza has exhibited nationally in institutions such as The DePaul Art Museum in Chicago, IL, and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and The Momentary, both in Bentonville, AR. She is the recipient of numerous honors including a 2015 National Association of Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC) Artist Grant and the summer 2018 Artpace International Artist Residency. Her work is also included in the permanent collection of the San Antonio Museum of Art.
Born to working class Mexican migrants, Verónica Gaona (b. 1994) is an interdisciplinary artist from Brownsville, Texas, a city along the Texas – México border landscape, who is now living and working in Houston. Gaona received a Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art from the University of Houston and a Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communications from The University of Texas at Rio Grande Valley. In 2021, she was the recipient of the national Artadia Award. In 2022, Gaona participated in the Monumentality in Art: Memory, History, and Impermanence in Diaspora panel at the CAA conference in Chicago and participated in the Engaging Latinx Art: National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Currently, she is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Houston and is a 2022-2023 Lawndale Artist Studio Program artist-in-residence.
Sites of Memory and Overlapping Territories is supported by a Curatorial Research Fellowship from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.