Young Latino Artists 18: Con/Juntos Exhibition

About the exhibition

Now in its eighteenth year, the current YLA exhibition Con/Juntos will be guest curated by visual artist Michael Anthony Garcia; the title, which means “With/Together,” reinforces the importance of the joining of ideas and of individuals with a common cause, while also referencing the idea of conjuntos, a group of musicians collaborating and unifying their talents to create beautiful music for the public to share.

Michael Anthony Garcia creates groupings of artists throughout Texas as well as from Mexico, Colombia and Argentina, with a wide range of experience, styles, personalities and practices. The groups were introduced to each other’s work and given time to collaborate either in person or by means of email, telephone or Skype™ to develop their ideas and finally create a brand new work to debut in the Museum. The exhibition also features artworks by the individual artists themselves to give insight into their practices and their particular contributions to the collaborative work. The diverse works presented in Con/Juntos represent a wide range of media from photography, installation, video, and performance, to collage, sculpture, yarn bombing and painting.

Curator’s Note

This exhibition series has played a big part in my artistic life in one way or another since I’ve lived here in Austin and was very anxious to take the reins. The excitement of opening this exhibition up to international artists, regardless of the extra budgetary constraints this adds, actually helped me develop the concept for this collection of works. 

I have selected an amazing group of artists to not only show their own work, but to collaborate on new artistic endeavors making their world debut in this exhibition. The selected Texas artists hail from Austin, Houston, Dallas and San Antonio. This year other cities represented are Bogota, Colombia as well as Mexico City and Guadalajara, Mexico. Keep an eye out here for the press release with a full list of the artists involved

Even with the YLA series’ inherently constraining eligibility for inclusion (being Latino within a particular age parameter), these limitations create an opportunity to explore and/or create community in different ways. Much like our true cultural reality, this community is comprised of individuals from our various Latino nationalities and cultures, gender identities, and sexual orientations. 

This exhibition is about nurturing a diverse community of individuals while paying reverence to a shared common space. The selected artists collaborated and opened their homes and studios to each other, sometimes across the globe via the internet, to create many of the works in this exhibition. From many voices, stories and ideas, a community is formed and compose a common song in “Con / Juntos.”

Works

YLA 18 Featured Artists: Raul Gonzalez, Daniel Adame, Sergio Garcia, Ricardo Paniagua, Robert Jackson Harrington, Isabella Bur, April Garcia, Nelda Ramos, Javier Vanegas, Colectivo Sector Reforma (Javier Cárdenas Tavizon, Santino Escatel, and Alejandro Fournier), and Tejidos Urbanos.