School of Art Welcomes Chicana-Tejana Artist Santa Barraza to Campus

Texas A&M University, Kingsville

Santa Barraza

The School of Art lecture series at the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences welcomes contemporary Chicana-Tejana artist and educator Santa Barraza to campus.

Santa Barraza is known as one of the country's most significant Chicana and Tejana artists. She has exhibited widely across the United States and internationally. Her career reflects prestigious awards, appearances and lectures, exhibitions and publications. 

The lecture is at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 28, at Hillside Auditorium, room 206.

Barraza is currently a professor of art at Texas A&M University. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts from the University of Texas at Austin. 

She was born, raised and currently lives in Kingsville, Texas, situated at the borderlands of south Texas, a terrain considered by the Spanish colonizers to be "no man's land." It is located one hundred and fifty miles north of the Rio Grande River that borders the United States and Mexico.

Barraza said she struggles as an artist to create a new North American identity of the borderlands. She looks to portray her experience as an arena in which existing identity disintegrates, to be enriched and replaced with the land, family, memory, culture, gender, folklore and legends.

"My artwork depicts the dual experience of living at the chaotic borderlands of Texas and Mexico as a contemporary reality," said Santa Barazza. 

Her work is deeply rooted in her ancestry and heritage. She brings rich history to life using a variety of media in family portraits, watercolor dream scenes, mixed media artist books and murals. 

She paints bold representations of "nepantla," a Nahuatl term meaning in the middle or land between. Barraza depicts the historical, emotional and spiritual land between Mexico and Texas, between real and celestial, and present reality and the mythic world of ancient Aztecs and Mayas.

In 2001 Texas A&M University Press published "Santa Barraza: Artist of the Borderlands," edited by Maria Herrera-Sobek and was awarded the 2002 Southwest Book Award from the Border Regional Library Association.

The publication offers some of her most powerful and characteristic works, and invites readers to experience Barraza's vision, perspective and legacy.

All are invited to learn more about Barraza and her career at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 28, at Hillside Auditorium, room 206.

The School of Art visiting artist and scholar lectures are free and open to the public with generous support provided by the Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation.

Please visit the Fine Arts Center Gallery for more information about the School of Art lecture series.