Vincent Valdez Art on Display in Sn Antonio Tx
The Strangest Fruit
Vincent Valdez
Exhibition: May eight – Aug 31, 2014
- Summer 2014
- Hudson Showroom
The Strangest Fruit is a series of large paintings that is inspired past the lost/erased history of lynched Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in the state of Texas from the tardily 1800'south well into the 1930'southward. The title is taken from the verse form Strange Fruit (Abel Meripool) that was made famous by Billie Holiday'southward recording in the 1930'southward. The verse form/song lyrics present haunting visuals of blackness Americans, using the metaphor of "foreign fruit" to describe the victims who were hanged from trees.
I adapted the lyrics and slightly altered the text to describe a Texas landscape, which sprouts "chocolate-brown bodies" instead of "black bodies." The championship, The Strangest Fruit, suggests that this sinister portion of American history goes much further than we accept been told. The subject of Latino lynchings is most entirely unknown, unheard, and unspoken of in the United States.
Although this subject area is inspired by a specific history, I was more concerned with identifying and creating images that speak of the present. These portraits depict the distorted bodies of contemporary young brownish males, distinguished by their wear, hairstyles, peel color, sneakers, historic period, etc. All of these specific "markers" tend to lead to a hysteria that targets and stereotypes the bodies of young minority males in American gild. At starting time glance, the painted bodies appear to dangle on the canvas. They can besides be interpreted as levitated figures, caught somewhere in between life and death, reality and illusion, remembrance and erasure, sky and hell. They bladder against an entirely bare background, struggling to remain in focus and straining to be. They have no history or foundation, no story to be told, no voice to be heard.
Presenting this historical subject in a contemporary context enables me to present the noose every bit a metaphor and to advise that the threat of the noose still looms over the heads of the young Latino male in American order. The punishment and fate of the noose has been bearded and resold to the American public but still carries the weight of its harsh justice to a disproportionate number of minority American males. Institutions and methods such as: mass incarceration and for- profit prison industries, the endless American drug war forth with its legal complexities and hypocracies, the war on terror, the military industrial complex, the criminalization of poverty, broken educational systems and biased justice systems, stop and frisk programs and public acceptance of racial profiling, mass deportation and non denizen hysteria, police brutality and oppression, a racially divided and unbalanced media, etc, all lend themselves to a fearful and forgetful American future.
Similar the erased bodies of the by, these present-24-hour interval individuals face the threat of a similar fate in America, the more that they struggle to truly pause free, the tighter the noose will choke.
Artist
Vincent Valdez
San Antonio, Texas, USA
Born 1977, San Antonio, Texas
Valdez grew up in San Antonio, TX and demonstrated talent for cartoon at an early age. He received a full scholarship to The Rhode Island School of Blueprint where he earned his BFA in 2000. In 2004 at age 26, Stations, Valdez's suite of awe-inspiring charcoal drawings, was shown at the McNay Museum in Texas. He was the youngest artist to have a solo exhibition at the McNay. Exhibition venues include: The Los Angeles County Museum of Fine art, The Snite Museum of Art, The Frye Museum, The Mexican Museum of National Fine art Chicago, The Parsons Museum in Paris, The Smithsonian Museum of American Art, OSDE Buenos Aires, The Laguna Art Museum, The Bell Gallery at Dark-brown University and others. A recipient of the Skowhegan School of Painting '05 and The Vermont Studio Center '11, and the Kunstlerhaus Bethania Berlin Residency 'fourteen, Vincent currently resides and works in Firestation #15, his restored 1928 Firestation San Antonio, TX.
See More than
Related
Exhibitions
- Summertime 2014
- Window Works
San Antonio, Texas, Usa
- Bound 2022
- Hudson Showroom
Curator: Anaïs Castro
- Summer 2021
- Hudson Showroom
Curator: Patricia Restrepo
Be the starting time to know!
Sign up for the Artpace newsletter to get news, events, and more delivered to your inbox.
- Press
- Join Our Squad
- Visit Us
445 N Main Ave, San Antonio, TX 78205
P: 210.212.4900 | F: 210.212.4990 |
E: info@artpace.org
Artpace is generously supported by: National Endowment for the Arts, Texas Commission on the Arts, Linda Stride Foundation, San Antonio Department of Arts & Culture, The Brown Foundation, Inc., The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and more…
Artpace is generously supported by: National Endowment for the Arts, Texas Commission on the Arts, Linda Pace Foundation, San Antonio Department of Arts & Culture, The Brown Foundation, Inc., The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and more…
Source: https://artpace.org/exhibitions/the-strangest-fruit/