Uncovered Spaces
An Exhibition of Women and LGBTQIA+ Artists at the International Museum of Art & Science (IMAS), McAllen
Exhibition Director: Dr. Katherine Moore McAllen, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Director Center for Latin American Arts
Exhibition Curator: Raheleh Filsoofi, MFA, Vanderbilt University
Project Description
Uncovered Spaces is an exhibition and event series centered on female artists, including young women, queer, and non-binary artists, concerning the social structures that mediate our everyday experiences. Uncovered Spaces will articulate ideas through art that relate to women’s cultural expectations and the social norms that challenge or oppress women, as well as ways that protect and support them. This international exhibition of 13 artists and scholars will be held from March 26 through July 10, 2022 at the International Museum of Art & Science (IMAS). Participating artists and scholars have been invited through a curatorial process that values a diversity of perspectives. The event venues will serve as a space for women, female-identifying artists, non-binary artists, and scholars to discuss their work, research, interests, and strengths regarding gender, identity, and social norms. The project also seeks to reveal connections between the creative process, feminine solidarity, diversity, and shared knowledge while creating a model for a community arts-based research project in south Texas. While our main concern is to examine how art can engage and offer a critical re-thinking of current social and political issues, the broader implications touch upon the foundations of art practice and our many lives' existential issues. This exhibition is supported by the Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation, the Raul Tijerina, Jr. Foundation, H-E-B, the Hollyfield Foundation, the College of Fine Arts, the Vanderbilt Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies, and the UTRGV Center for Latin American Arts.
List of participating Artists and Scholars:
- María Magdalena Campos-Pons
Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons is an interdisciplinary artist investigating themes of history, memory, gender, and religion and their impact on identity, evoking stories of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, indigo, and sugar plantations, Catholic and Santeria religious practices, and revolutionary uprisings primarily through video, performance, photography, and sculpture. - Wendy Red Star
Wendy’s cross-discipline works explore the intersections of Native American ideologies and colonialist structures, both historically and in contemporary society. Raised on the Apsáalooke (Crow) reservation in Montana, Red Star’s work is informed both by her cultural heritage and her engagement with many forms of creative expression, including photography, sculpture, video, fiber arts, and performance. - Margarita Cabrera
Margarita Cabrera addresses cultural identity, immigration, violence, labor, and US-Mexico border relations through sculpture, mixed media works, and collaborative projects that intersect contemporary art practices, indigenous art, Mexican folk art, and embroidery traditions. - Vesna Pavlović
Vesna Pavlovic’s photographic practice examines the evolving relationship between memory and photographic image production technologies, expanding the photographic image beyond its frame, format, and narrative about various political and cultural histories, including photographic archives and related artifacts. - Jana Harper
Jana Harper is a mixed media and video performance artist exploring materiality and transcendence, relationships, and human connectivity via collaborative projects, movement, and sculptural work. - Melissa Potter
Working cross-disciplinarily with artists, ethnographers, and educators, Melissa Potter’s research and artistic practice considers women’s culture in handicraft, social customs, and gender rituals with a focus on handmade paper-making through a feminist and socially engaged lens. - Daisy Patton
Born in Los Angeles, California, to a mother from the South and an Iranian father she never met. She spent her childhood between California, and Oklahoma, deeply affected by these conflicting cultural ways. Influenced by collective and political history, memory, and the fallibility of the body, Patton’s work explores the meaning and social conventions of families, relationships, storytelling, story-carrying, and connection. - Erika Diamond
Erika Diamond is an artist, curator, and educator whose work questions the fragility and resilience of both the human body and human connections by revealing the vulnerability negotiated during human interaction in the medium of textile. - Lauren Sandler
Lauren Sandler is a ceramic artist whose work investigates narratives of power and perspective through the vernacular of the vessel, exploring the mutable topographies of the interior, obfuscated terrain, and exterior perspectives. She also addresses themes of memory, containment, and context. - Linda Behar
Linda Behar is a visual artist whose practice investigates gender and sexual constructs, identity, and societal expectations through form, abstraction, printmaking, and collaborative works. - Zac Thompson
Zac Thompson is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores the ephemerality of the normative structures defining home, family, gender and its fluidity, and queerness through drawing, performance, and curatorial practice. - Natalia Arbelaez
Natalia Arbelaez’s work research undervalued histories, such as Latin American, Amerindian, and Women of Color. She works with how these identities are lost through conquest, migration, and time, gained through family, culture, exploration, and passed down through tradition, preservation, and genetic memory. - María Fernanda Barrero
María Fernanda Barrero is a Mexican artist who lives and works in Monterrey, México. She examines our environment and the synchrony of our biospheres as well as conservation issues. Her work is mainly characterized by the use of white paper or thread, as well as the use of contained monochrome spaces to explore ideas related to nature, landscape, and the interconnectedness of our ecosystems. - Rebecca VanDiver – Assistant professor of African and African American Art, Vanderbilt University.
Scholar Rebecca VanDiver (Harvard College, A.B.; and Duke University, M.A. Ph.D.) teaches Modern and Contemporary African American and African art and visual culture courses. Her research focuses on twentieth-century black women artists and African American engagements with Africa. She is also an affiliated faculty with American Studies and African American and Diaspora Studies.
Uncovered Spaces Professional Team
Uncovered Spaces Graphic Design
Logo Design: Naghmeh Goodarzi, Director of Design, Catalog and Poster Design: Setareh Ghoreishi: Assistant Professor of Graphic Design, Department of Art and Art History, Oakland University
Coordinator of Media and Graphic Design for Exhibition and Events:
Carlos Limas, MFA, UTRGV Center for Latin American Arts
Coordinator of Graphic and Web Design for Exhibition and Events:
Angela V. Scardigno, MFA, UTRGV Center for Latin American Arts
Special Projects and Events Assistant
Kathy Bussert-Webb, Ph.D., MFA Student, School of Art & Design
Curatorial Assistant
Rajaa Yeazji-Ayoubi, BFA Student, School of Art & Design, UTRGV