Natalia Anciso (BA, Studio Art, 2008), will have a solo exhibition at the O’Kane Gallery of the University of Houston. The exhibition, Natalia Anciso: Aspire | Aspirar, includes examples of individual works from several of her series over the past six years.
Anciso creates art predicated on realities and legends of her upbringing. Her works are visual records of family, community and border culture along her native Rio Grande, where her family has resided for over four generations. Anciso reconfigures vernacular art forms, like pano arte, handkerchief art believed to have emerged from Chicano prisoners in the 1940s, and the huipil, embroidered Mayan textiles worn by indigenous women in Southern and Central America, to tell contemporary stories of life along the Texas/Mexico border. Juxtaposing beautifully colored, watercolor-drawn images of flowers indigenous to Texas against stark, monochromatic media images, meticulously rendered in pen, Anciso offers the beauty of home against grisly depictions of the Mexican Drug War. Anciso uses these tools on domestic textiles such as handkerchiefs, pillowcases, and bed sheets to examine psycho-political struggles of life along the borderlands, La Frontera.
These borderlands are currently ravaged by poverty, human trafficking, and the escalating Mexican Drug War. Aspire | Aspirar represents a close look at the struggle of the silent and underserved whose experiences have motivated Anciso’s calling and her craft. The opening reception will be held on Thursday, October 26 and the exhibition will run until Dec. 7, 2017.