April 3 - 25, 2020
Presa House Gallery is proud to present the Master of Fine Arts Degree Candidate Gabi Magaly’s 2020 thesis exhibition Yo No Nací Para Aguantar A Nadie (translated: I wasn’t born to put up with anyone). The exhibition marks the culmination of Magaly’s studies and training at the University of Texas at San Antonio. A virtual tour of the exhibition and individual works can be viewed online at PresaHouse.com and Presa House social media pages. The exhibition opens Friday, April 3, 2020, will remain on display through April 25, 2020, with a virtual artist talk planned on the closing date.
Gabi Magaly was raised in a Mexican-American household, saturated with stereotypical machismo and marianismo behaviors. Hypermasculinity oozed brutality, male dominance, and bad cologne. Placated and tongue biting women who don’t speak up, act up, and always have rice and tortillas on the table at precisely six o’clock. Daughters reared to submit to males, are being taught to fetishize purity, holiness, and expected to feed stomachs, ego, and taste for violence. Magaly draws from personal experiences within this toxic culture, and her work is a call to action to empower women’s voices and to soften those of men with a little too much to say. Her imagery references everyday household items traditionally associated with my Mexican-American households: Fiesta spices, Fideo, prayer cards, candles, blankets, and tortillas.
“I want these items to be culturally recognizable and physically accessible to the viewer. A visual language usually reserved for Abuela’s kitchen and living room is transformed into defiance, empowerment, and hopefully change. As we look towards the future, my work encourages women and girls in my culture to find the strength to forget about the old traditions and bring up their daughters to be independent.”
Gabi Magaly (b. 1993) was born in Bryan, Texas. She works predominantly in the medium of photography but also works in other mediums, including printmaking, video, sculptural installation, and intervention. Magaly received her BFA at Sam Houston State University in 2015 and is a 2020 MFA candidate at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Magaly’s work has been exhibited in a solo exhibition at Satellite Gallery in Huntsville, TX, and included in group shows in San Antonio, TX, Berkeley Art Works in Martinsburg, WV, and in Masur Museum in Monroe, Louisiana.
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