Changarrito Residency: Rachel Salcido

Apr. 1

Apr. 1 @ 8:00 am Apr. 30 @ 5:00 pm

Oil and Ether, 2024
Oil, acrylic, sand on canvas
48” x 60”

About the Artist

Rachel Salcido (b. 2002, El Paso, TX; lives in Austin, TX) is a disabled Mexican-American painter and printmaker. They are a senior undergraduate at the University of Texas at Austin pursuing a double major with a BFA in Studio Art and BA in Art History, along with a Bridging Disciplines Program certificate in Museum Studies. Salcido’s work explores the in-between spaces created by their intersectional identities in relation to navigating femininity and familiarity through the context of gender expression, disability, and tradition.

They have exhibited in the group shows “Reflections: Through Our Eyes,” (2019), at the El Paso Museum of Art; the Center Space Project group exhibition “Somos Recuerdos” at the University of Texas at Austin’s Visual Arts Center; and the Advanced Print show “Counting Corners in a Sphere” (2024) at the ICOSA Collective, Austin. Salcido’s work was most recently on display at Flatbed Press for the “Edition Variables 2024: New Austin Printmakers” show where Salcido’s work received an Honorable Mention recognition.

Artist Statement

“As a queer, disabled Mexican-American, my work is rooted in the exploration of intersectional identity through the context of gender expression, disability, and tradition. I enjoy working with mark-making as a way to open conversations about labor, which parallels and embodies the labor associated with navigating physically and socially inaccessible spaces.

The bodily physicality of fruit—especially pomegranates and papayas—often reappears in my work, embodying gender, sexuality, and cultural connection. Papayas, for example, fill the stands of fruit markets in Mexico; their yonic imagery mirrors the matriarchal undercurrents of the culture. I consider still life fruit paintings to operate as micro and macro landscapes—liminal spaces that accompany the bodies of water in my work, like the Rio Grande, whose waters bear the weight of the lost histories of the border. I am drawn to these transitional spaces for their nostalgic yet eerie nature. Having grown up in El Paso, I came to see its cultural liminality as central to understanding intersectionality and in-betweenness. It is not quite like living in Mexico, not quite like the rest of Texas, and certainly not like the rest of the US. Both my work and I are the product of this liminality, as well as the visual and figurative tension it elicits.

My recent practice uses the visual language of the US-Mexico border, drawing on patterns and rhythms inherent to the landscape: the light filtering through fences, the towering barriers of the international bridge, the rhythmic pillars of highways, and the silhouette of oil refineries echoing the mountains encircling the city. These elements form a certain vernacular, pairing the man-made with the natural. The sand in my gesso grounds my working surface in the literal earth, reinforcing the play between liminality and architectural imagery, while burlap surfaces reflect cultural conversations of physical labor.

At its core, my work seeks to cast my politicized daily environment into a space of otherworldliness and near-sacredness. My recent work recontextualizes the mundane—such as bridges, water, fences, borders, and the corporeality of fruit—as worthy of veneration and reverence. I work to transfigure this imagery into symbols of the divine as a way to find transcendence in the familiar. I look to Hilma af Klint’s abstract works for connections to both the primordial, celestial, and spiritual, along with her navigation of capturing the scale invariances of such. Contemporary artist Hayley Barker has influenced my work as I look to her treatment of surface and the thinness of her paint. I am drawn to the way Barker navigates depicting “the macrocosm in the micro”, as she puts it, to cast everyday imagery as sublime through the use of color and pattern.”

Changarrito Cart – April 19 & 20 and April 26 & 27 

Artists have the opportunity to sell their art on the Changarrito cart in front of the Museum (or an offsite location, as representative for the Museum during various Austin festivals). Changarreando expands the reach of the artist by presenting their gallery online, while allowing the option to sell merch over Instagram and receive 100% of the sale.

Rachel will be at the Mexic-Arte Museum featuring her artwork on the Changarrito cart right outside the Museum’s entrance on April 19 & 20 and April 26 & 27 from 12 – 3 PM.

Follow us on Instagram and Facebook for updates on original work available for purchase and behind the scenes of the artist’s work, space, and creative process.

Changarrito Instagram Live Interview – April 24 at 5 PM

You’re invited to Mexic-Arte Museum’s Changarrito Instagram Live event with artist Rachel, taking place virtually through the Museum’s Instagram account @mexic_arte! Luisa Fernanda Perez, Mexic-Arte Museum’s Curator of Exhibitions and Director Of Programs, will facilitate the virtual event with a series of questions directed at the artist including a Q&A taking place during the last 20 minutes of the event.