The Dallas-based Talley Dunn Gallery has announced Nuestra Collective’s members as the recipients of the 2023-2024 Equity in the Arts Fellowship.
In 2020, the gallery launched the fellowship program to address some of the racial inequities in the art world, in which artists of color have been denied equal access to resources. The gallery initially committed to investing $30,000 over five years to fund the fellowship, with intentions of continuing the program indefinitely. Past program recipients include Jer’Lisa Devezin, Nitashia Johnson, and Kevin Owens (2020); Martha Elena, Charles Antoine Gray, Juan Negroni, Alex Ordóñez, and Jae-Eun Suh (2021); and Ciara Elle Bryant, Tina Medina, and Enrique Nevárez (2022).
This year marks a shift, as the gallery has selected a collective rather than individual artists to receive the fellowship. According to its website, the Nuestra Artist Collective is “a platform for women artists, including cis and trans women, non-binary and gender non-conforming people, to encourage dialogue about the experiences of Xicana and Latine women.” The collective includes Michelle Cortez Gonzales, Melissa Gámez-Herrera, Karla García, Sara Herrera, Tina Medina, Eliana Miranda, Tesa Morin, Lupita Murillo-Tinnen.
Nuestra Collective, from left: Michelle Cortez Gonzales, Tesa Morin, Melissa Gámez Herrera, Eliana Miranda, Lupita Murillo-Tinnen, Karla García, Tina Medina, Sara Herrera
Nuestra Collective presented its inaugural exhibition, Fronteriza, at the Oak Cliff Cultural Center in Dallas in October 2022. More recently, in March 2023, the collective presented Aquí y Allá at Presa House Gallery in San Antonio.
Tina Medina, a co-founder of the collective was also a 2022 recipient of the Equity in the Arts Fellowship. She told Glasstire, “As a Talley Dunn recipient during the past year I talked often about Nuestra Collective at our meetings at the gallery. The collective is a passion project for me that rates equally to my art making. I believe Talley saw how dedicated I was and so the gallery researched our collective and told me they were impressed by what we were doing.”
Ms. Medina explained, “During this fellowship, Nuestra will focus on establishing a more sustainable and efficient way to maintain our collective while still interacting with artists and our communities. Talley Dunn Gallery is offering its spaces, knowledge and monetary funds to assist in our growth. I was initially surprised but also thrilled to learn that we had been awarded such an honor. This is Nuestra’s two year anniversary and we are excited about all the possibilities of the upcoming year, including panel discussions with notable figures, art exhibitions, and collaborative growth.”
Learn more about the individual artists in the collective via Talley Dunn Gallery’s website.
