Past Exhibition: April 7, 2017 — April 29, 2017
jason eric gonzales martinez, Nepantlera: Establishing Identity
Through Cerámicas y los Cosas
jason eric gonzales martinez: Nepantlera, Establishing Identity Through Cerámicas y las Cosas reflects on Martinez’s Tejano experience living “in-between” spaces of creativity, culture, and identity (nepantla); creating a visual language based on the effects of what he has come to understand as a critical mestizaje. martinez’ arte accentuates the area of overlap that constructs identity beyond race and ethnicity in a way that blends intersectionality with aesthetic decisions and material choice. martinez’ assembles su arte in a way that questions the effects of time and how we determine value in beauty, history, and knowledge. his rasquache aesthetic speaks to multicultural sensibilities and an intuitive action that uses ceramics and re-purposed materials to create poetically arranged forms and functions. he is moved by spiritism in art, and he communicates this by creating work that evokes ceremonial practice, ritual, and introspection. he unites the contemporary with loss and re-membering; creating a site for negotiating and connecting the tangible and the imaginary, the historical and the personal, the familial and the sacred. This practice of re-membering; creating form from multiple parts, putting history and experience together in a progressive structure while honoring an indigenous connection to place and the spirit supports the production of mi arte that reflects my desire to create intimacy in exchanges among himself, the art, and the public at large. This collection of artifacts allows a view into this liminal experience, existing simultaneously as both insider and outsider.
San Anto native jason eric gonzales martinez is a multidisciplinary Xicano artist. He received his MFA from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 2016. gonzales martinez has participated in numerous exhibitions in his professional career and has worked in Mexico with emerging regional artists, Peru with border artist and MacArthur Fellow Guillermo Gómez Peña and members of La Pocha Nostra. Through formal training and lived experience, gonzales martinez has developed a distinct style of conceptualizing and creating art that speaks to his indigenous ancestry and Tejano experience while communicating an intercosmic vision and a universal understanding of the effects of colonization and cultural negotiation. In his research, he looks to Mexican American Studies, and Chicana/o artists, theorists, and scholars for a truthful understanding of what it means to be a critical being and an effective creator of culturally relevant art. gonzales martinez aim to create art that teaches and reaches; laying the foundation for a space for healing, and in the process building sight for understanding positionality in a global context.