June 26 - July 1, 2020
This week’s Nasher Windows installation features the work of Tierra Firme (Analise Minjarez and Sarita Westrup) and runs June 26 – July 1, 2020.
Orbital Migration 3000 by Tierra Firme draws its name from the astronomical term for a major change in a planet’s usual orbit around its host star. Such shifts find a parallel in the complex relationships Latinxs may have with their homelands, whether through conflicting emotions, complex monetary arrangements, or constant movement between languages, cultures, and terrains. Furthering their work’s connection to sky, land, and identity, Tierra Firme is inspired, in the artists’ words, “by the panoramic mountain aesthetics of the West Texas region, the tropical deserts of the South Texas Plains, and the civic border landscape.”
Orbital Migration 3000 consists of two constructed boulders joined by a hand-lashed fence in the form of a tunnel. Made from woven reeds, the tunnel reaches toward each rock in apparent connection, but the recognizably fake boulders disrupt this impression. Through this disjunction, Tierra Firme questions ideas of authenticity in relation to cultural geography and consider how the nations of the United States and Mexico connect to one another.About Tierra Firme
TIERRA FIRME is the project-based collaboration of Analise Minjarez & Sarita Westrup and speaks to their identity as women born and raised on the border of Texas & Mexico. Their installations explore issues of duality, authenticity, cultural geography, and migration. Through creating artworks that respond to the physical landscape of the region, Tierra Firme reflects on the bicultural aesthetics of their border home. Together they provide two perspectives from either end of the Texas-Mexico border region (Minjarez from El Paso and Westrup from McAllen), emphasizing the idea of collective cultural identity.
Tierra Firme was awarded the 2017 Arch and Anne Giles Kimbrough Fund Award from the Dallas Museum of Art and has exhibited works at La Quinta Mazatlan in McAllen; Box 13 Artspace in Houston; Moncrief Cancer Institute in Ft. Worth; and Mountain View College, Bathhouse Cultural Center, Oak Cliff Cultural Center, Latino Cultural Center, and Kirk Hopper Gallery in Dallas.
Both artists also pursue individual artist practices grounded in fibers and sculpture. An interdisciplinary artist and arts educator from El Paso, Minjarez received her BFA in fibers from the University of North Texas in 2013 and is currently a 2021 MFA candidate at Southern Methodist University. She teaches basketry, clay, and natural dye workshops at the Oak Cliff Cultural Center, Oil and Cotton, and the Southwest School of Arts. Most recently, she exhibited work at the XOLO Gallery in El Paso and at the The Cedars Unions: Boedeker Building in Dallas.
Westrup lives and works in Penland, North Carolina, but her personal textile and sculptural works are inspired by the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, where she was born and raised. She received her MFA in fibers from the University of North Texas in 2016, and her work has been exhibited widely, including recent exhibitions at the Wayne Art Center in Wayne, Pennsylvania; Kentucky Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky; the Latino Cultural Center in Dallas; and form and concept in Sante Fe, New Mexico. She is currently Textile Studio Coordinator at the Penland School of Craft.
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