Michael Agresta
Forgotten for Over a Century, Border Hero Jovita Idár Is Rediscovered by Her Hometown of Laredo
How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment
An upcoming documentary and book mark the suffrage centennial, focused on Texas contributions.
In the decade leading up to 1920, suffragists in Texas won a series of dramatic victories for women’s voting rights. They organized to impeach a governor, convinced his replacement to partially enfranchise women by promising to support his reelection, and … Read More
The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar
The wildly imaginative Brownsville painter fuses pop culture with abstraction, family life, and his love of South Texas.
The wildly imaginative Brownsville painter fuses pop culture with abstraction, family life, and his love of South Texas. * by Michael Agresta December 16, 2019 When rising Brownsville artist Cande Aguilar was invited to show his work in his first … Read More
A Joyful El Paso Art Exhibit Imagines a World Ruled by Latinx People
From a cosmic piñata to “Aztechnonauts,” sculptor Angel Cabrales envisions an alternate history defined by Latinx creativity.
Recently, visual art from the Texas-Mexico border has evoked the region’s troubling history. El Paso artist Angel Cabrales has made important contributions to this story. But Cabrales’ new show of sculptures and resin wall hangings, The UnColonized: A Vision in … Read More
The Clothes that Make the Man
Jose Villalobos’ art redresses the macho traditions of norteño culture.
Jose Villalobos’ art redresses the macho traditions of norteño culture. – by Michael Agresta June 24, 2019 On a June evening in 2018, artist Jose Villalobos stood quietly in an exhibit hall at the Museo de Arte de Ciudad Juárez, … Read More
Snakes and Ladders
In San Antonio, two artists explore hidden geometries of the city.
Living in a city can deaden our instinct for noticing environment. Caught up in our day-to-day lives, we walk — or, especially in Texas, drive — through our cities without giving much consideration to either the superstructures of urban design … Read More
At Home in the World
Houston artist Prince Varughese Thomas blurs boundaries of politics, medium and identity.
At Home in the World Houston artist Prince Varughese Thomas blurs boundaries of politics, medium and identity. – by Michael Agresta April 8, 2019 As a young kid growing up between Texas and India, Prince Varughese Thomas was at first … Read More
Ancestors in a Strange New Land
In Houston, an exhibit of vibrant, playful Egúngún costumes speaks to Nigerian tradition and migration.
Visitors to “Ara Oru Kinkin (Masquerades Mythology),” the current show by the artist Akirash at Lawndale Center for the Arts in Houston, will find themselves confronted by a wealth of visual information and very little in the way of curatorial … Read More
A New Pray-the-Gay-Away Drama Suggests Conversion is Possible (Just Not the Kind You Think)
Poignant awards-season fare, Boy Erased makes the case against the Christian “cure” for homosexuality.
What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? That, more or less, is the question asked by the new Joel Edgerton-directed film Boy Erased, which was featured at the Austin Film Festival and opens nationwide this weekend, just … Read More
A San Antonio Art Show Quietly Foregrounds Migrants’ Stories
More people are displaced than ever before — nearly 69 million. The scale of that crisis is hard to grasp, but visitors to One to Another will see it in a new light.
Ours is an era of mass displacement. At no other point in history have so many people around the world been forced to leave home. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) now counts 68.5 million forcibly displaced people … Read More