Aesthetics of Identity: Artists and Curators Panel Discussion
Tuesday, January 30, 2023;  5:30-7pm
The Bleachers at Devasthali Hall

Join artists, curators, and educators, Bella Maria Varela, hazel batrezchavez, and Pico del Hierro-Villa in an open discussion moderated by Eva Gabriella Flynn as they reflect on the influences of their work and the intersections of nuanced identity on the US/Mexico border.

Bella Maria Varela is a multimedia artist based in Austin, Texas whose work combines photography, video, performance and colorful fuzzy blankets to layer her personal experiences with American history and popular culture. Inspired by viral news stories and obnoxious influencers, she critiques mainstream anti-immigration rhetoric and subverts the appropriation of Latine culture. Bella rearranges personal and found video footage, TikTok songs, thrifted souvenirs, and San Marcos-inspired blankets to create physical gaps where new meanings can be interpreted and to carve out spaces where hybrid identities can exist and thrive. Using rasquache sensibilities, she distorts ideas of patriotism and nationalism, revealing the hollow promises that lie beneath them. Through her multimedia practice, she has developed her own hybrid language to visualize her family's journey from Guatemala through the US-Mexico border and to Washington DC. Bella is currently an Early Career Fellow at The University of Texas at Austin within Expanding Approaches to American Arts.

hazel batrezchavez is a brown queer artist and educator. Their works in textiles, performance, and sculpture are rooted in politics of survival and the poetics of movement. batrezchavez’s work has been exhibited at Santa Fe Art Institute (NM), Loom Indigenous Gallery (NM), Southern Exposure (CA), SOMA (MX), Radford Museum of Art (VA), ICOSA Collective (TX), Higher Art Gallery (MI) among many others. batrezchavez is a recipient of the SFAI StoryMaps Fellowship (2019) and New Mexico Indivisible Youth Fellowship (2023). They received their BFA in Anthropology and Studio Art from Grinnell College and their MFA in Sculpture from the University of New Mexico.

Pico del Hierro-Villa is originally from El Paso, TX and is currently based in Albuquerque, NM where they received their M.A. in Chicanx Studies. Influenced by Chicana Feminist theory and art, they interpret Chicana Feminists’ critical approaches into creating a visual storytelling method that is based on resistance through breaking social borders. Chicana Feminists’ oppositional work, meant to uplift overlooked narratives and communities, led them to create their artistic method to represent stories of Queer and Trans Latinx communities in the SW through visual narratives. Pico is also an independent curator and academic that focuses on Borderlands and Latinx visual arts through their project BorderPlex and other curatorial/written works. Both their artistic and academic work has been published in journals, featured in HyperAllergic and displayed at the El Paso Art Museum, National Hispanic Cultural Art Museum and 516 Arts. 

Eva Gabriella Flynn is a Chicana interdisciplinary artist whose work weaves personal memory into historical narratives of the US/Mexico Borderlands.  She is a recipient of the Chihuahuan Desert Cultural Fellowship, a 2022 Emerging Artist of New Mexico grant and award recipient, and participated as Artist in Residence at the Organ Mountain Desert Peaks National Monument.  Her work as exhibited nationally and internationally at the Zhou B. Art Center, CHicago, IL; Field Projects, New York, NY; SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM; and Instituto de Lorenzo Medici, Florence, Italy. Eva Gabriella’s cultural practice extends into her work as the Education and Outreach Coordinator for the University Art Museum at New Mexico State University.