Plantcestors
Suzy Gonzalez
Saturday, October 19, 2024
- Sunday, January 12, 2025
Central Library - 710 W. César Chávez St.
Gallery (2nd Floor)
About the Exhibit
Plants sustained our ancestors and they continue to sustain us—through food, medicine, clothing, housing, to providing the very oxygen we breathe. Every plant is sacred and we could not survive without them. Plantcestors depicts the portraits of artists, activists, and culture workers based in Yanaguana / San Antonio, TX that bring inspiration to the community through their art, leadership, and social justice work.
Within each painted portrait are natural plant materials that the person is connected to. The plants hold meaning based on ancestral connections, childhood memories, cultural roots, or the lessons that they bring. Some enjoy the plants in their gardens, herbal practices, spirituality, as food, or for their beauty alone. As we connect with our relative that is the land, we remember, we appreciate, and we reciprocate the gifts that she gives us.
The process of creating these works includes photography, discussion, gardening, foraging, pressing, dehydrating, gluing, resining layers, and painting. The figures sit on the surface, in the present. Their Plantcestors are behind them but remain a part of them.
About the Artist
ARTIST STATEMENT:
My work analyzes what it means to decolonize consumption and art creation. This is intertwined with remembering the lessons that the earth has to teach us. I work with natural plant materials like in conjunction with manipulated art supplies to consider identity, mixedness, and resistance. This material use works to dismantle folk and fine art hierarchies. I call these “mestizx media” works, reclaiming the “mestizo” colonial caste label. I define mestizx media as when materials originate from the region(s) of the artist’s ancestors. Accepting mixedness is also about embracing queerness and the fluid nature of identities that reject constructed binaries. My public artwork has included themes of celebrating contemporary artists and activists, histories of the land, native plants and animals, and concepts of love and solidarity. My work serves to work through my own intersections and to strive for intercultural conversations in my community. This, I hope, will open doors to compassion and healing in this world of destruction.
ARTIST BIO:
Suzy González is an artist, educator, writer, self-publisher, curator, and organizer based in Yanaguana, colonially named San Antonio, TX. She has had solo exhibits at Galería E.V.A., Spellerberg Projects, Presa House Gallery, Hello Studio, Palo Alto College, and two-person exhibits at Museo Eduardo Carrillo, Texas A&M University Corpus Christi, and the University of Connecticut. She has completed murals with Texas A&M-San Antonio, the City of Logan, UT, the City of Pasadena, TX, San Antonio Museum of Art, Centro San Antonio, and the San Antonio Street Art Initiative. González is currently in residence with Austin Art in Public Places and is working on a new public art project for the Austin History Center. She has also attended residencies at Vermont Studio Center (VT), the Trelex Residency (Peru), The Wassaic Residency (NY), Starry Night Residency (NM), the Studios at MASS MoCA (MA), and Hello Studio (TX). She publishes Xicana Vegan zine, co-organizes the San Anto Zine Fest, and is a part of Dos Xicanx, Breathe Collective, and the Water Writers Collective. González is an alum of the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures Leadership Institute, the Intercultural Leadership Institute, and served as a mentor for the NYFA Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program. She teaches in the Visual and New Media Arts Department at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, TX. She holds an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and a BFA from Texas State University.
Image credit
Diana, 2023, Suzy Gonzalez