Tina Fuentes has used the human figure as the central mode of inquiry throughout her work, sometimes

recognizable, sometimes
severely abstracted. A limited color palette, with an emphasis on black and white pigments, and large-scale energetic canvasses
are other notable characteristics of her oeuvre. Her art has been informed by a commitment to social and spiritual issues, such as
womens rights, racial and ethnic equality, the investigation of religious symbols from her Catholic upbringing and the vast desert
landscapes of South Texas and Mexico.
Over the past two and a half decades, Delilah Montoya has documented various Chicana and Chicano communities through
photographs, books and video. She has explored issues of social justice, migration, the impact of tourists in the Southwest and
womens roles in society. A central theme of her work has been the recuperation of iconic female characters and the revision of
generally accepted interpretations of religious and cultural figures.
Kathy Vargass earliest photographs reflect the nuances of her East San Antonio neighborhood and demonstrate her preference
for making art from what surrounds her: the local environment, her neighbors, her family and friends. The artist began her art
production in the documentary style, black-and-white wet process photographs printed from a single negative in the darkroom,
tightly composed and in crystalline focus. A major shift in Vargass work occurred in the early 1980s, when she moved inside
the studio and began to stage small scenes from elements of interest, often found objects. At that time, the artist initiated the
approach found in this exhibition with its use of multiple-layered images and hand-colored pigments applied directly to the
surface of the photographic print.

Arte Pblico Press

University of Houston
4902 Gulf Fwy, Bldg 19, Rm 100
Houston, TX 77204-2004
www.artepublicopress.com
Order by phone: 800-633-ARTE

ISBN 978-1-55885-814-5

9 781558 858145

51995

Cervenka and Zuiga

The art show was curated by Mark Cervenka of the OKane Gallery at the University of Houston-Downtown and Grace Zuiga at
Multicultural Education and Counseling through the Arts in Houston, Texas.

Voices in Concert: In the Spirit of Sor Juana Ins de la Cruz Tina Fuentes, Delilah Montoya and Kathy Vargas

Voices in Concert: In the Spirit of Sor Juana Ins de la Cruz features works by three outstanding Texas artists that deal with issues
of gender and racial inequality: Tina Fuentes, Delilah Montoya and Kathy Vargas. The themes within their art speak to ideas of
identity, freedom, transformation and exploration. Their work offers mature perspectives while broadly embracing heritage in new
and inventive ways. It is this freedom to createcombined with cultural and historical contextsthat suggests a connection with
the seventeenth-century Mexican writer, Sor Juana Ins de la Cruz.

Voices in Concert: In the Spirit of Sor Juana Ins de la Cruz

Tina Fuentes, Delilah Montoya and Kathy Vargas

Voices in Concert
In the Spirit of Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz
Tina Fuentes, Delilah Montoya and Kathy Vargas

Mark Cervenka
Curator
Grace Zuiga
Curator
Ann Leimer, Ph.D
Essay
OKane Gallery - University of Houston, Downtown
Multicultural Education and Counseling through the Arts
March 26 - April 24, 2015

Project Support and Organizations

The OKane Gallery at the University of Houston-Downtown
is funded by a grant from the City of Houston through
Houston Arts Alliance. The project supported by this grant
was created by a partnership of the OKane Gallery, MECA
(Multicultural Education and Counseling through the Arts)
and Arte Pblico Press.

Curators Statement
The OKane Gallery at the University of HoustonDowntown and Multicultural Education and Counseling
through the Arts (MECA) in Houston, Texas, are proud
to partner in hosting Texas artists Tina Fuentes, Delilah
Montoya and Kathy Vargas in the exhibition Voices in
Concert: In the Spirit of Juana Ins de la Cruz. The careers
of Fuentes, Montoya and Vargas bridge a life experience that
includes issues of gender and racial inequality addressed by
the Chicano Movement beginning in the mid-1960s. The
themes within their art speak to ideas of identity, freedom,
transformation and exploration.
Their work offers mature perspectives without necessarily
obvious ties to historical documentation, more broadly
embracing their heritage in new and inventive ways. It is
this freedom to create combined with cultural and historical
contexts that suggests a connection with the seventeenthcentury Mexican writer, Sor Juana Ins de la Cruz. As a
young and brilliant girl hoping for a life of study and writing,
Sor Juana was unable to attend university because of her
gender; she thus chose the convent as her only alternative
to marriage. Her legacy continues to resonate as a voice
against repression and for equality and critical thinking. Her
legacy also embraces the beauty and wonder possible in
life, the transformative experience of reading literary and
scholarly works and looking at art that can traverse the
pitfalls of prejudice and short-sightedness. Tina Fuentes,
Delilah Montoya and Kathy Vargas each provide different
revelatory paths and reward the viewer with rich historical
context through beautiful and unexpected contemporary
visions.
This year will mark the tenth anniversary of MECAs
commemoration of Sor Juana Ins de la Cruz. MECAs

celebration of Sor Juana includes honoring contemporary

Chicana and Mexicana artists in the visual and performing
arts. MECA is a community-based nonprofit organization
committed to the healthy development of underserved
youths and adults through arts and cultural programming,
academic excellence, support services and community building.
MECA is a Latino-based multidisciplinary and multicultural
arts organization that has served the Houston community
for more than thirty years. Although known for our culturally
based arts education, MECA nonetheless continually seeks
new approaches for disparate communities, especially
young people, to find common ground through the arts.
MECA looks to collaborate with artists by presenting,
commissioning and producing artwork that traverses the
boundaries of tradition, represents time-honored practices
but also innovates and gives new perspective to the critical
role the arts can play in contemporary social life. We are
especially interested in artists whose work brings to light the
experiences of life on the margins of societies, economies
and cultures.
The University of Houston-Downtown is a
comprehensive four-year university offering bachelors
and selected masters degree programs and providing
strong academic and career preparation as well as lifelong learning opportunities. Located in the heart of the city,
the University reflects the diversity of the Greater Houston
Area, and through its academic programs engages with
the community to address the needs and advance the
development of the region. UHD is an inclusive community
dedicated to integrating teaching, service and scholarly
research to develop students talents and prepare them for
success in a dynamic global society.
3

Celebrating Sor Juana, Celebrating Tejana Artists

Ann Marie Leimer

Interrogating Sor Juana

 Juana Ins de la Cruz stands as an emblem of enduring

inspiration for feminists, intellectuals and artists of the
Amricas and serves as a muse for the exhibition Voices
in Concert, the subject of this essay. Who was Sor Juana?
What is her legacy? What has she bequeathed us and what
connections can we find between a Colonial Mexican
Catholic clergywoman and three contemporary Chicana
artists deeply entwined in the history and art of Texas? A brief
overview of the woman, her time and her accomplishments
are in order before establishing the linkages between Sor
Juana and the artists that follow in her indomitable spirit:
Tina Fuentes, Delilah Montoya and Kathy Vargas.
Juana Ins Ramrez de Asbaje was born in 1648 a
short distance southeast of Mexico City in San Miguel
de Nepantla. Her mother, Isabel Ramrez de Santillana,
demonstrated a somewhat surprising disregard for some
of the more commonly accepted conventions of the day
when she produced six children from two different men
without the benefit of church-sanctioned marriage. We
know that Sor Juanas father was Pedro Manuel de Asbaje y
Vargas Machuca and that he hailed from the Basque region
of Spain, but we do not know much else except that he
may have held the military rank of captain. Pedro de Asbaje
did not entertain a physical, nor an emotional presence in
his daughters life from her early childhood onward.
While the legitimacy of her birth may have raised
concern, Juanas social status was somewhat heightened
by her position within a strict social hierarchy known as El
Sistema de Castas, or the casta system prevalent in New
Spain from the time of the Spanish Conquest in 1521
until independence three centuries later. The casta system
created a method of ranking people based on epidermal
hue and ethnicity, codified colonial thinking about identity

and behavior and enforced a rigid structure that awarded

greater opportunities and social movement to those with
lighter skin and a higher percentage of Spanish blood. The
system located those born in Spain, known as Peninsulares,
on the highest rung of the social ladder, followed closely
behind by criollas and criollos, meaning those born of
Spanish parents in the New World. Juanas position as a
criolla placed her close to the top of the social system.
While her casta ranking jettisoned her to nearly the highest
echelon of colonial hierarchy, her familys limited monetary
resources and her mothers unmarried state relegated her
to a less enviable position. Juana spent her first years on
a hacienda leased from the Catholic Church and managed
by her maternal family, but at the age of eight she was sent
away from her mother and siblings to the home of her aunt
and uncle in Mexico City.
In perhaps the most important document produced
by her hand, the Respuesta a Sor Filotea, or the Reply to
Sor Philotea, Juana recounted her childhood and gave us
precious insight into the circumstances and conditions of
her early life. She demonstrated a propensity to all things
intellectual from the very beginning. Juana read voraciously
from the time she was three, reportedly devouring the 5000
volumes of her grandfathers library in the next five years.
Aware of her extraordinary abilities and insatiable desire for
learning while most children thought only of toys, games or
their next meal, Juana asked that she be allowed to take up
formal education at the university in Mexico City around age
six or seven. She stated, . . . my urge to learn was stronger
than my desire to eat, powerful as this is in children. Her
mother did not award Juana this opportunity, and the child
remained safely ensconced among her grandfathers books.
5

 When Juana was eight years old she suffered two losses
that would have enduring consequences, the death of her
grandfather and her permanent removal from the family
home. The reasons for her relocation remain under debate.
Isabel Ramrez had recently given birth to a son, a halfbrother to Juana. The presence of a new suitor, Diego Ruiz
Lozano, and the subsequent increased economic burdens
of a new child may have played a part in her mothers
decision. Whatever the cause, Juana came to live in Mexico
City with Mara Ramirez and Juan de Mata in significantly
improved material circumstances. The eight-year-old must
have felt an incredible sense of isolation. Bereft of maternal
love and tenderness, she turned to inner resources and
focused her will on expanding her mind and pursuing
ever more challenging scholarly subjects. Juana spent the
next eight years in these solitary endeavors. Word of her
intellectual range and prowess then secured an invitation
to join the vice regal court as a lady-in-waiting. Here she
enjoyed the protection and encouragement of a series of
enlightened Viceroys and Vicereines until 1667. At that time,
she left the court and entered the first of two convents,
the convent of San Jos de las Carmelitas Descalzas or the
Barefoot Carmelites. This Catholic order was an exceptionally
strict one, and she left shortly thereafter. However, within
eighteen months she joined the convent that would be her
home for the remainder of her life, the Convent of Santa
Paula of the Order of San Jernimo.
Juana Ins Ramrez de Asbaje became Sor Juana Ins
de la Cruz or Sister Joanna Agnes of the Cross upon her
embrace of cloistered convent life. She explained her
decision stating, I became a nun because . . . , given
my total disinclination toward marriage, it was the least
unreasonable and most becoming choice I could make
6

. . . She declared that she wished . . . to live alone, to

have no fixed occupation which might curtail my freedom
to study, nor the noise of a community to interfere with
the tranquil stillness of my books. Juana understood that
Colonial Mexico mandated two paths for women, the
convent or marriage, and she chose the one most favorable
to her continued pursuit of knowledge. Alicia Gaspar de
Alba reminds us of other equally intense pressures that
surrounded Sor Juana, noting that the Spanish Inquisition
persecuted women who enjoyed literacy, who voiced their
thoughts and who asserted themselves in the public arena.
The convent afforded the Catholic nun many freedoms; she
could take her meals privately, she dwelt in separate rather
than shared rooms that included a study for reading and
quiet contemplation, she could and did have servants, and
she entertained royal visitors and members of the clergy
with whom she discussed literary, spiritual and scholarly topics.
Sor Juana continued to benefit from the patronage
of the viceregal court until she became enmeshed in
religious and political intrigue in the late 1680s. In one of
the conversations conducted in her study, she critiqued a
sermon delivered by a Jesuit, Antonio de Vieira, some forty
years earlier. The Bishop from Puebla, Manuel Fernndez de
Santa Cruz, was present at this gathering and, highly taken
with Sor Juanas erudite dissection of de Vieiras text, asked
her to commit the argument to paper. Shortly after and
without asking permission, Bishop de Santa Cruz published
her work in 1690 as Carta atenagrica and included a
letter of his own that he signed with a pseudonym, Sor
Philotea de la Cruz.
The Bishops immediate superior Archbishop of Mexico
Francisco Aguiar de Seijas, also a Jesuit, disapproved of
many of Sor Juanas literary endeavors and may have seen

her Carta atenagrica as a veiled attack on his authority.

In any case, Sor Juana appears to been caught between
the political aspirations of the two men, who contributed
to a progressively unfavorable and restrictive atmosphere
that began to surround the defiant nun. Sor Juana penned
a response in 1691, the impressive Reply to Sor Philotea,
in which she vigorously defended her and other womens
right to an intellectual and creative life. She endured bitter
attacks from previous supporters, even worse from her
enemies, and suffered most directly from the abandonment
of her spiritual confessor, the powerful Jesuit Antonio Nez
de Miranda, whom she had known since her teenage years.
Two years of increasing isolation and vicious opposition
took their toll, and Sor Juana then capitulated, selling her
books and ceasing to hold literary and philosophical salons
in her convent quarters. She spent the remaining two years
of her life in literary silence and died in 1695 at age forty-six
from the plague.
While we can read Sor Juanas literary production
and can understand her from her words alone, how do
contemporaries portray her in the visual record? Many
portraits were made of Sor Juana, some during her lifetime
and many posthumously. In a work sometimes attributed
to J. Snchez, we see Sor Juana in her position as a young
lady-in-waiting at the viceregal court circa 1666. She sits
facing the right in three-quarter profile, wears elaborate
clothing and holds the ever-present book in her right hand
while gesturing with her left. The inscription or leyenda
at the bottom of the painting declares that Juana Ins de
Asbaje is fifteen years old and that she lives at the Court
of the Viceroy of Toledo, the Marqus de Mancera, and
recounts that she successfully passed a test administered
by forty scholars who examined the depth and breadth of

her knowledge. In another important visual document, Juan

de Miranda painted a posthumous portrait of Sor Juana in
1713 for the Hieronymite convent. The artist depicts the nun
and scholar standing in her convent library, quill in hand
poised to write. Multiple texts flank her on the left along
with an extensive inscription that covers the vertical length
of the writing desk.
Certainly one the most telling visual representations
we have of Sor Juana is the painting by the noted colonial
artist Miguel Cabrera from 1750, titled Retrato de Sor
Juana Ins de la Cruz de Miguel Cabrera (Fig. 1). Scholars
understand that Cabreras portrait uses Mirandas earlier
work as its precedent. We see Sor Juana as we imagine
her, as we long to imagine ourselves, in our studies, our
libraries, our studiosworking, thinking, writing, producing
art objects, inspired by minds greater than ourselves and
striving to create a legacy like Sor Juanas that continues
to inspire, mold and shape, long after we pass out of this
world. Cabrera depicts the nun seated at her desk, one
elegant hand carefully marking a passage in the open text in
front of her as if momentarily interrupted from her studies,
while the other equally graceful appendage loosely holds
a rosary among the ten beads marking the section where
Hail Marys are recited. A smaller book that resembles a
Bible sits closed on the desk to the left of the large volume
Sor Juana considers. The desk contains an elaborate writing
box that holds four quill pens and a single crucifix. Behind
her stands a bookcase with three shelves filled with various
volumes, the titles carefully noted in script by the artist.
Cabrera intends to record not only the extensive library
amassed by the nun while cloistered for nearly thirty years,
but also to remind us of the initial library of 5000 tomes
she conquered with the aid of her grandfather. A clock
7

amid the books marks the time she has to spend on her
studies before returning to other convent obligations. A
black and white habit of the Order of St. Jerome covers
her entirely, with the exception of her expressive hands
and her delicate face that engages the viewer directly with
quiet, calm regard. Sor Juana wears a white tunic secured at
the waist by a small belt and a black monastic scapular, or
outer garment, while a white wimple and a black veil cover
her head. An oval escudo or shield floats at the level of
the nuns throat. The escudo was an important part of the
habit of a Hieronymite nun. Made of copper, tortoise shell
or other precious materials, it generally measured around
ten inches and carried either painted or later embroidered
scenes of Marian devotion. In this case, Sor Juanas escudo
depicts the Annunciation, the moment when the Archangel
Gabriel informs the Virgin Mary of the coming birth of Christ.
The artist has included the convention of the leyenda, or
legend, with three inscriptions crafted in cursive script, one
above and slightly to the left of Sor Juanas head and two
of equal weight in the lower right-hand and lower left-hand
corners of the painting. Cabrera presents Sor Juana in her
element, in the environment of her choosing, a place not
without compromise, but a place that enabled her to write,
think and create.

Figure 1. Miguel Cabrera, Retrato de Sor Juana Ins de la Cruz de Miguel

Cabrera, 1750

Interrogating Nepantla

 Within the past twenty years, such scholars as

Gloria Anzalda, Renato Rosaldo and Homi Bhabha
have increasingly addressed the issues of interstitiality
and hybridity within a postcolonial or cultural/national
framework. Contemporary Chicana scholars, most notably
Gloria Anzalda, have proposed the theoretical concept of
Nepantla as a means of marking a temporality or a phase
where the multiplicities of identity, culture and social position
collide. The term Nepantla contains multiple literal and
figurative associations and springs simultaneously from a
geographic location in Mexico and from Nahuatl, a Central
Mexican indigenous language. As mentioned previously,
acclaimed seventeenth-century Mexican literary figure Sor
Juana Ins de la Cruz was born in the town of San Miguel
de Nepantla under the inspiring peaks of the active volcano
Popocatpetl. Three hundred years later another important
historical event associated with this area occurred when the
Mexican government attacked a group of local Nepantla
citizens, members of the National Liberation Forces (FLN).
Those members that escaped the assault relocated to the
Lacandn area of Guatemala and later emerged as the
Ejrcito Zapatista de Liberacin Nacional (EZLN) or the
Zapatista National Liberation Army, a group that actively
works toward social justice for indigenous peoples. The
term originates from the indigenous language Nahuatl
spoken by the inhabitants of the Valley of Mexico, and
describes the land between two bodies of water. The image
of a space between two worlds, or tierra de medio, served
as a springboard for Chicana lesbian theorist Anzaldas
theoretical constructions. Anzalda first introduced the
concept of Nepantla in the final section of her 1987
Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza and continued
to develop this theory until her premature death in May 2004.
10

Anzalda articulates Nepantla as a place of in-between,

a place of transition where people cross between two or
more cultures, identities, realities. She views this place as
both a space and time of change, mutation and evolution; a
location where you experience yourself not as one discrete
entity or another. Within this understanding, you sense
yourself in a state of becoming. Anzalda also represents
Nepantla as worldview, as a means of examining the
construction of the world, the production of knowledge and
the creation of identity evident in the work and artistic vision
of many of this exhibitions artists. She provides perhaps
the clearest definition of the term when she states, I use
Nepantla to talk about the creative act, I use it to talk about
the construction of identity, I use it to describe a function of
the mind. Therefore, Nepantla provides a means to analyze,
interpret and integrate our experience of the world and as
well as a way of thinking about the artistic process.
Four metaphorsspace, time, spirit and imagecan
help illustrate Anzaldas concept of Nepantla. If we situate
Nepantla in space, we can imagine it as a line, a border
marking difference, a boundary delineating beginnings and
endings. We can easily perceive Nepantla as a geopolitical
border, a degree of longitude and latitude that separates
and divides states and nations. This physical line creates a
place marking a specific political, cultural and social space
where something ends and another reality comes into
being. As we cross this boundary, we experience the process
of both initiating and realizing an idea, of leave-taking and
arrival. Nepantla, as process then, manifests itself in areas
encapsulating the zones of difference, the space where
crossing occurs, not only in the actual line or border itself.
If we place Nepantla in time, we can conceptualize it as
a momentary process, a transitional place and a temporal

space, where transformation occurs as we move in and

through an ambiguous arena. Sensations, vague hopes
and memories converge, startling our thinking into new
arrangements and insights. Past events, present truths and
future possibilities mix and mingle in a fluid, ephemeral
confluence.
If we situate Nepantla in spirit, we can view it as a
portal that transports us from one side of consciousness to
another, a connection between the physical and spiritual
realms. Moving back and forth between the concrete realm
of materiality and the intangible realm of inspiration plays
an integral part in the creative process and closely links
the experience of Nepantla with artistic production and
viewership. The artist uses the tangible physical objects of
pigment, paper and canvas to manifest intangible states
of imagination, identity and vision. Artwork magically
transports the viewer, physically rooted in the concrete
space of exhibition site or museum, into the world of
reverie, daydream and illusion.
If we locate Nepantla in visual form, the image of a
chrysalis serves as an apt metaphor because it represents
a temporary state as well as a process of becoming.
Underneath the chrysaliss protective covering, potentiality
throbs, poised to burst forth, to claim and articulate new
ground. The exterior of the cocoon parallels the external
surface of the human body, the skin containing human
consciousness that experiences and articulates Nepantla.
The interior of the cocoon houses an internal process, the
fine, delicate fibers of the capsule protecting the creation,
while its softness belies the intense process of struggle,
development and impending emergence within. Chrysalis
as metaphor further reinforces Anzaldas construction
when she describes Nepantla as uncomfortable, chaotic

and a little bit of an agony. Bringing a new creature, a new

understanding or a new perception into the world implies
effort and, frequently, discomfort.
Most significantly, Nepantla moves away from dualistic
conceptions, encouraging and, in fact, mandating multiplicity.
The concept also departs from the binary model of either/
or, brown/white, all/nothing, toward the blurred, pluralistic
fusion of both/and. Scholars probing the questions of
borderlands, hybridity and interstitiality provide a significant
contribution to the understanding and experience of our
world and ourselves. Anzalda understands Nepantla as
part of the process of transcending duality and as a potential
means of healing the divisions that currently exist between
cultures and peoples. Although Nepantla may necessarily
function as a place of confusion, chaos and conflict, it also
may serve as a potential space of recovery, renewal and,
ultimately, revolutionary change.

11

Interrogating Voices in Concert

12

Tina Fuentes

was born in west-central Texas in

the city of San Angelo in 1949 and later moved further west
to Odessa, where she spent her early years. She studied
at the University of North Texas, in Denton, where she
earned an undergraduate degree in art education and an
advanced degree in painting. Fuentes began her teaching
career in the Texas public school system, but quickly moved
to university-level teaching, initially in New Mexico. In
Santa Fe, she exhibited at numerous galleries and pursued
training at the internationally known Tamarind Institute, a
leading printmaking institution. Fuentes later joined the
faculty of the Texas Tech Universitys School of Art, where
she established a significant local, regional and national
presence during the past thirty years.
The artist has used the human figure as the central mode
of inquiry throughout her work, sometimes recognizable,
sometimes severely abstracted. A limited color palette, with
an emphasis on black and white pigments, and large-scale
energetic canvasses are other notable characteristics of her
oeuvre. A commitment to social and spiritual issues, such as
womens rights, racial and ethnic equality, the investigation
of religious symbols that derive from her Catholic upbringing,
and the vast desert landscapes of South Texas and Mexico
inform her art production.
In Confessional (2014) (Fig. 2), Fuentes refers to the
site of a weekly Catholic ritual known as the Sacrament of
Confession, in which a believer confesses his or her sins to
a spiritual specialist and receives absolution. The repentant
person enters a triple-chambered wooden structure, closes
a door or curtain behind them, recites his or her sins through
a screen to the confessors waiting ears, and then performs
penance assigned by the spiritual specialist. Penance often

consists of a series of prayers or actions intended to remedy

or repair the injuries caused by the believer.
In this work, the artist uses a powerful vertical format
to enclose three separate and unequal registers of visual
information. Using strong red and yellow lines to delineate
the space of the spiritual transformation or cleansing, the
artist provides the viewer three portals or openings of equal
size to enter this sacred sanctuary, two in the lower register
of the painting and a solitary mode of entry in the top
register. Entrance and egress exist only through the same
spaces.
The lower register contains a triad of varying sizes, using
shades of blue with occasional yellow accents; the triad
may reflect a relationship among people or aspects of a
single person. The left-most gesture is vertical, ghostlike,
shimmering, barely present, perhaps in the process of
emerging into fullness. The middle form of the triad
dominates with suppressed energy just under the surface.
The right-most aspect of the triad is largely gestural, moving
at once toward and away from the center. This area of the
canvas appears to chart a process of becoming, of leavetaking and arrival, a Nepantla moment of in-between.
In contrast, the upper register holds two clearly defined
blue squares of slightly different hues bracketed above by
a horizontal bar of golden scumbled pigment. The blue
squares have nearly equal weight and contain perforations,
porous areas that reveal the black ground of the canvas. Tiny
white highlights add depth and mystery to these structures,
the largest elements contained in this space. Does the artist
record a binary, a before and after?
Fuentes repeats the same golden pigment textured with
overlapping layers in the middle section of the work. It
echoes the frenetic energy of the unfettered horizontal bar
13

at the top of the work. However, here Fuentes outlines the

small rectangular central register with only red pigment, a
physical containment that prevents any physical movement
between the upper and lower areas. Could the small
rectangular central register stand for the screen separating
the penitent from the priest, a place where words, often
whispered or wept, are caught, exchanged and released?
Not surprisingly, Fuentes often produces works in a
series that explores thematic, technical or formal concerns.
Hombre con Frutas (2014) and Hombre con Seis Frutas
(2014) clearly encompass a visual question the artist strives
to answer through the medium of paint. Somewhat smaller
than many of her other works, these twenty-four inch
square canvases may remind viewers of Cezannes Still Life
with Basket of Apples (1890-1894), which is approximately
the same size as Fuentess more complex and abstracted
work. Other comparisons could be drawn to the interiors
of Pattsi Valdez, where the clearly recognizable objects
of daily life help produce a dreamlike and often surreal
narrative, such as Orange Chair with Fruit (1991) or Room
with Walking Umbrellas (1993). Lastly, in a gender reversal,
viewers might recall Paul Gaugins colonial exoticism of
Two Tahitian Women (1899) with one woman holding a
shallow platter of fruit, the other a spray of mango flowers.
However, Fuentes clearly has another agenda.
The artist directs the viewers initial glance to the fruit
named in the titles, placed in the center of each painting. She
renders the rounded forms in lemon-yellow, with deep dark
outlines and layers of quickly executed strokes that produce
a profound sense of vitality. The fruits lie close to each other
in a shallow almost nest-like vessel. Fuentes used small
swaths of scarlet red and even smaller areas of cobalt blue
paint to add dimension to the containers exterior. White
14

and black pigments bracket the fruit, bringing additional

emphasis to these dominant forms. The hombre (man)
alluded to in the works titles is largely abstracted, suggested
more clearly in Hombre con Frutas with a mass that could
reveal the torso and arms proffering produce. Expressive
lines ornament the surface of the works, producing depth,
direction, energy and excitement, and suggest subtle
shades of meaning. Fuentess work gives the viewer ample
opportunity to experience Nepantla, particularly because
of the abstract nature of her work, where forms and color
serve as the primary conduit for the production of meaning.
Fuentes hints at a movement between secular and sacred
realms, material and spiritual worlds, and between nascent
and more fully formed identities.

Figure 2. Tina Fuentes, Confesional, 60 x 48, Mixed Media, 2014

Delilah
Montoya

was born in Fort Worth,

Texas in 1955 and grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, spending
her childhood summers in northern New Mexico with
her maternal grandparents. She worked as a commercial
photographer before moving to Albuquerque in the
late 1970s. Montoya then earned three degrees from
the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque, including
advanced degrees in both printmaking and studio art. The
artist had an extensive teaching career at various universities
and colleges before becoming a faculty member at the
University of Houstons School of Art in 2001. Standing just
shy of five feet, this petite powerhouse is one of Americas
most prolific photographers.
Over the past two and a half decades, Montoya has
documented various Chicana and Chicano communities,
produced photographic installations, designed and
produced artists books, digital photomurals and video
projects. She has explored issues of social justice, migration,
the impact of tourists in the Southwest and womens roles
in our society. A central theme of her work has been the
recuperation of iconic female characters and the revision
of generally accepted interpretations of religious and
cultural figures. The artist has incorporated Anzaldas idea
of mestiza spirituality as a frame for these investigations,
with Nepantla at the core of her depictions of identities in
conflict and new beings in the process of becoming.
In the series titled Contemporary Casta Portraits, Montoya
has used the colonial casta portrait format in combination
with the Dutch still life tradition and its emphasis on flowers,
food, animals and insects to produce a contemporary reinterpretation of the casta system shown in the Voices
exhibition. In sharp contrast to the colonial prototype,
Montoya does not rank her subjects by phenotype or
epidermal characteristics. Rather, she uses three forms to

portray the social position of the individuals she records,

forms she terms as domicile, biology and consumption.
The images document the surroundings of the subjects
and their physical place in the world, often combining both
exterior and interior views. She captures the external physical
characteristics of the people who inhabit these domiciles,
characteristics that demonstrate the range and diversity of
ethnic and racial mixing in Texas and beyond. Lastly, the
artist records consumption, the objects and material culture
valued by the family or individuals she portrays.
Many of the Mexican colonial casta paintings portray
human figures in direct reference to their physical
surroundings, their domiciles as termed by Montoya in
her contemporary revision. In the colonial paintings, artists
grouped family members standing or seated immediately
outside their dwelling with its adjacent landscapes or inside
framed by the parameters and accouterments of a specific
living area. The exterior compositions record a range of
scenes that directly reveal the familys financial status
by representing their holdings, such as a diverse array of
actively producing fields and orchards, a range of harvested
agriculture products, various kinds of livestock, and workers
or slaves actively tilling the fields and tending animals.
Other kinds of exterior views record the families indolently
enjoying lush tree-filled landscapes with a flowing stream
nearby and mountains framed in the far distance. Their
children play with family pets while their parents admire
local wildlife. Exterior scenes used to reveal less financially
fortunate families show members actively working the
land; processing crops, such as husking and shelling maize;
or driving heavily laden pack animals to market. In direct
contrast, the river in paintings depicting the lower social
classes represents work rather than leisure, with families
fishing its waters for food and scrubbing their laundry on
its rocky banks. Similarly, the interior compositions of the
15

elite reveal family members surrounded by finely wrought

furniture, luxurious textiles and carpets, musical instruments
and cabinets displaying delicate china collections. In the
interiors inhabited by those of lower rank, artists recorded
family members either tending to their own immediate
needs, including mending clothing, meal preparation and
other household maintenance, or using their dwellings as
small businesses actively providing goods, such as ice cream,
pulque (an alcoholic beverage) or recently spun cotton.
In Casta 1 (Fig. 3), Montoya gestures toward the Dutch
still life tradition when she places a crimson red hibiscus,
a fully ripened golden yellow mango and two white sea
shells amid the material objects treasured by the trio of
figures who pose behind a lace-covered table. Two animals,
a guard dog and a lap dog framed by palm and pine trees
and the lush vegetation, complete the reference. A granite
sculpture graces the table, an upright square column, its
upper-half consisting of successive horizontal planes,
stands immediately in front of one of the standing male
figures. A companion granite piece, a chessboard poised
for players next strategic move, claims a larger section of
the table, while the text Moroles chiseled into its recessed
base is a reference to Texas granite sculptor Jess Moroles.
All three of the figures wear light jackets and two wear
hats, a fact that contradicts the feeling of heat generated by
the bright sunlight and cloudless sky. A building with floor
to ceiling windows brackets the figures against the table,
emphasizing the tropical locale. Smiling, everyone seems at
ease, a sense of order and harmony prevail.
Casta 3 (2014) from Montoyas series depicts an intimate
family interior; it follows colonial precedents in allowing the
viewer an inside view of the households leisure activities
along with items that can be understood as consumption,
in Montoyas schema. Three family members sit around a
wooden table covered with a white lace tablecloth protected
16

from accidental spills by a see-through plastic cover. The man

in the lower left-hand corner actively strums an acoustical
guitar, his ebullient smile shared by the woman to his left.
An elegantly bearded man sits immediately to the womans
left, his attention more concerned with the pleasures of
eating than with the pleasures of the music that surrounds
him. Moving away from the table, we see a comfortable
and well-stocked kitchen replete with the detritus of daily
living; electrical kitchen implements stand with green
ceramic canisters on an openwork metal shelf, while serving

Figure 3. Delilah Montoya, Casta 1, 32 x 24, Digital Photography, 2014

dishes and various foodstuffs line the counters and shelves.

A partially devoured pumpkin pie complete with a white
plastic knife sits on the table, alongside a shallow glass bowl
filled with nutsthe nutcracker conveniently close byand
an open A&W Root Beer can. Two pairs of eyeglasses rest
near these food items; a third pair rests on the womans
nose.
Within the combination kitchen, dining and living
spaces depicted in the portrait, the familys commitment to
spiritual practices and religious rituals is made apparent by
the prominent turquoise cross worn by the woman, echoed
by another larger cross of the same hue and overlaid with
a rosary hanging from the metal shelves to her left. The
wall directly behind the woman hosts a large image of the
Virgin of Guadalupe, braced on each side by photographs
documenting family history and achievements. These
family portraits record important milestones, including
either a wedding or an anniversary and a graduation. An
ornately carved wooden dresser placed directly under the
La Virgencita serves as the family altar, its surface laden
with candles, figures of saints, flowers, framed family
photographs and an open three-dimensional shrine or caja.
The consumablesthe material objects Montoyas lens
recordspoint toward the biology she also strives to
document. Hispanas and Hispanos are women and men
living in New Mexico today who trace their ancestry to
the Iberian Peninsula and who privilege their link to the
Spaniards who came to Nueva Espaas northern frontier
in the early 1600s. We can assume the biology of the
photographers subjects when we consider the various
levels of their consumption, which tellingly include a barely
discernible European family crest heavily embroidered
against the long-sleeved red and blue striped polo shirt worn
by the man sitting on the far right. Some Nuevo Mexicanas

and Mexicanos with Hispana and Hispano identities also

acknowledge themselves as mestizas and mestizos,
meaning that they recognize their indigenous ancestry as
well as their European origins. Another layer of cultural and
ethnic mixing potentially embodied by Montoyas Casta 3
portrait might be the genzaras and genzaros, understood
as detribalized North America natives, Southwestern
native peoples who were used as slaves or servants by the
Spanish. Whatever the ethnic or racial identities embodied
by these subjects, we perceive a family gathering graced by
an impromptu musical performance that reveals this place
as one of both spiritual and physical nourishment.

17


Kathy
Vargas was born in San Antonio, Texas in

1950 and has made her home there ever since, despite
a few significant side trips. The artist crafted her first
photograph at age twenty-one and, like Delilah Montoya,
developed a career in commercial photography before
pursuing academic studies. San Antonio native Tom
Wright mentored Vargas in this endeavor and influenced
her ability to quickly compose and capture telling images.
In the 1960s in London, Wright had been a roommate of
Peter Townshend, the noted guitarist for the musical group
The Who, and had gained entre into the rock-n-roll music
scene and later garnered success as one of the fields
leading photographers. Vargas traveled from one concert
to another, documenting life on the road and producing
formal portraits of well-known musicians. The artist went
on to earn both her undergraduate and advanced degrees
in photography from the University of Texas, San Antonio.
She later served as the Director of the Visual Arts Program
at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, for fifteen years
empowering the community and bringing increased access
to art education to San Antos West Side communities.
The artist began her association with the University of the
Incarnate Word in 1999 and currently serves as Associate
Professor of Art.
Vargass earliest photographs from the 1970s reflect
the nuances of her East San Antonio neighborhood and
demonstrate her preference for making art from what
surrounds her: the local environment, her neighbors, her
family and friends. The artist began her art production
in the documentary style, black-and-white wet process
photographs printed from a single negative in the darkroom,
tightly composed and in crystalline focus. A major shift in
18

Vargass work occurred in the early 1980s, when she moved

inside the studio and began to stage small scenes from
elements of interest, often found objects. At that time, the
artist initiated the approach found in this exhibition with its
use of multiple layered images and hand-colored pigments
applied directly to the surface of the photographic print.
Priests (1987-1989) comprises one series most indicative
of her new manner of working that evolved during this
transitional period. San Antonio had experienced a rather
startling and unexpected cold snap that resulted in multiple
bodies of dead birds accumulating in Vargass back yard. The
artist brought the lifeless birds into the studio, combined
them with other objects at hand, such as the thorns
from roses she had tended with her grandmother from
childhood, and generated a powerful series more about
life, transformation and resurrection than death as ultimate
finality. The use of natural elements, including flowers, fruit,
twigs with thorns and sprigs of leaves, appears as early as
1979 and continues to add rich nuance to her work today.
Over the past several decades, Vargas has created a body of
work that stuns in its richness, beauty and diversity.
Kathy Vargass Innocent Age series currently consists
of approximately sixty photographs, a number that will
ultimately expand as the artist continues to develop the
work. Her intention in the series is to question the happiness
and security we automatically associate with childhood.
Prompted by a local news story that recounted child abuse
and neglect, Vargas sought to peel back the veneer of
carefree childhood and expose the false performance of
safety and contentment cloaked by a childs momentarily
bright smile. She divides the work into three basic groups:
portraits of children, images of clothing and toys that
symbolically represent children and depictions of children

who are loved and accepted as well as those who figuratively

wear masks, false fronts woven by the epithets projected on
them by their caregivers. Vargas visually unites the section
of the series that appears more like formal portraits with
the repeating motif of red hearts on a rectangular band of
varying width, perhaps to indicate the promise of love that
each child hopes for, but may not realize. The images portray
groups of children as well as individuals, some of whom the
artist knew and many she did not. She begins the imagemaking process with recapturing existing photographs of
children and transforms them into tableaux through the use
of multiple exposures to produce a layered representation.
These deeply nuanced depictions contain some ambiguity
and encapsulate Anzaldas understanding of Nepantla as
uncomfortable and chaotic, especially when Vargas strives
to capture the tension between reality and illusion.
In the images where the artist uses clothing to represent
the life and history of a child, the viewer understands that
the single portrayal stands not just for one child, but for
many children. These are some of Vargass most powerful
visual statements. The photograph I Love Mommy Romper
(Fig. 4) is particularly poignant with its three heart-shaped
appliques, each successively smaller and holding the
individual words I, Love, Mommy mentioned in the
title. The appliques look as if they have been lovingly handembroidered on the romper with a whip or outline stitch.
The artist also places three ranunculus flowers in varying
stages of flowering over the body of the onesie, echoing
the trio of text-bearing hearts. Vargas declares in her artist
statement on this series that she uses roses to indicate a
loved child and grass to signify an unfortunate one, a child
that could experience careless disregard or violence. We see
grass everywhere in the image, it surrounds the symbolic

representation of the child, it appears to emerge from the

garment itself in wild and unruly tufts. While the child may
love Mommy, Vargas asks us to consider that Mommy may
not be able to love and nurture the child. The artist makes it
clear that the innocent age of childhood for many children
is nothing but the complete opposite.
In another contrasting pair of images from this series,
Rose Teddy Bear (2010-2014) and Grass Doll (2010-2014),

Figure 4. Kathy Vargas, Clothes: I Love Mommy Romper, 24 x 20, Hand Colored
Gelatin Silver Print, 2014
19

Vargas continues her visual exploration of the contrast

between children who have been nurtured, accepted and
affirmed and those who have been ignored, neglected
and abused. The viewer immediately receives a sense of
foreboding when first encountering Grass Doll, a small
plastic creature confined in the lower right-hand side of
the image casually thrown against rough stones that hint
at an exterior wall. Vargas halves the compositional area
with a sharp diagonal and weights the photographic space
with the presence of the doll in the lower right and the
near absence of any visual information in the upper lefthand section of the image. The doll lies utterly abandoned,
appearing old and worn with arms extending outward at a
stiff, inflexible angle.
Dressed in a onesie with elasticized sleeves, an ironic Peter
Pan collar and two pocket flaps, the dolls chest hosts a
winged insect emblem with antennae more ominous than
welcoming. The dolls face remains unmarked, its delicate
lips curving into slight factory-fashioned smile that belies
the physical and emotional pain Vargas seems to imply. Its
shuttered and heavily lashed eyes under faint eyebrows
compound the sense of neglect, the absence of spirit, and
produce a feeling of death. Grass grows in profusion upward
from the right-hand corner claiming the doll, so easily cast
away and forgotten.
In the companion piece, Rose Teddy Bear, Vargas uses
another diagonal, this time from lower right to upper left, to
establish the central line of movement. The bear lies slightly
on one side along this implied line on a fragrant bed of roses,
its open-armed pose somewhat reminiscent of the dolls
gesture. Vargas places multiple roses in various stages of
bloom from mere buds to lusciously opened blossoms, as a
backdrop for the toy. The warm tones of crimson and yellow
20

roses interspersed with other small-scale white flowers and

graceful green foliage produce a sense of lightness and
peace in direct contrast to the ominous darkness of the dolls
environment. The furry toy appears well loved, not worn,
softly cushioned as if the roses were meant to suggest a
quilt, an impression strengthened by the intersecting grid of
lines superimposed over the entire image. Its embroidered
mouth, nose and eyes are still completely intact, its fake
fur neat, not bedraggled. The bears jointed arms reach
upward toward an anticipated welcoming embrace that
make loving surroundings visible. The diagonal placement
of the bear and the doll, as well as their pose, is repeated in
both images and creates a visual link that allows the viewer
to establish a thematic comparison clearly illustrating the
provocative subject matter Vargas investigates in this series.

Interrogating Voices in Concert

Juana Ins Ramrez de Asbaje and Gloria Evangelina
Anzalda have functioned as theoretical frames for
considering the artists, issues and artwork that comprise
Voices in Concert. Hailed as the Tenth Muse and the
First Feminist of the Amricas, Juana Ins de la Cruz
made a profound and lasting impact on her time, on
the history of letters and on religious discourse. She has
also left an enduring legacy, one that has influenced the
generations of artists, writers and feminist thinkers that
have followed. The artists of Voices in Concert, Fuentes,
Montoya and Vargas, demonstrate clear connections to
Sor Juana because they embody the commitment to lives
lived on their own terms despite hardships, challenges
and limiting social structures. These three Chicanas have
devoted themselves to realizing an inner artistic vision and
have produced diverse and remarkable bodies of work in
that pursuit. They have contributed immeasurably to the
arts, the educational systems and the cultures of Texas
for the past several decades, serving as a role models and
mentors for their students, colleagues, the diverse Chicana/
Latina and Chicano/Latino communities within and beyond
the confines of Texas and the Southwest, and for artists
everywhere. Their work encourages us to question our
certainties and confront self-imposed limits. Therefore, I
see Anzaldas concept of Nepantla as integral to viewing
Voices in Concert. The exhibition can become the place of
recognition, a space where nascent realities and identities
emerge and engender a dialogic relationship that provokes
a state of becoming and being, rather than a fixed and finite
state. Visual representation can serve as a door, a portal
to the encounter with Nepantla that transports the viewer,

geographically rooted in the spaces of the exhibition, to an

interstitial place where history and memory have laid the
foundation for multi-layered, multi-vocal, multi-temporal
perception. Experiencing Nepantla in the process of
viewership, the visitor/viewer moves from one state of being
and knowing to another, leaves behind the current physical
locale and enters the artists realm, creation or vision. The
artists depictions function as a trigger, impetus or catalyst
for the making and experiencing of multiple voices,
shifting identities, new realities, alternate realms and can
transport their audiences to a unique and transformative
place of the viewers construction.

21

Bibliography
Anzalda, Gloria, editor. Entre Amricas, El Taller Nepantla,
October 1-December 2, 1995.
Exhibition catalog. San Jose,
CA: Villa Montalvo and MACLA, 1995.
___. and AnaLouise Keating, editors. This Bridge We Call Home:
Radical Visions for Transformation. New York, NY: Routledge,
2002.
___. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. 2nd edition. San
Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books, 1999.
Crdova, James M. Clad in Flowers: Indigenous Arts and
Knowledge in Colonial Mexican Convents. Art Bulletin 91/ 4
(December 2001): 449-467.
de la Cruz, Juana Ins. A Sor Juana Anthology. Translated by Alan
S. Trueblood. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988.
Gaspar de Alba, Alicia. Chapter 1, The Politics of Location of
la Dcima Muse: Prelude to an Interview. In [Un]framing
the Bad Woman: Sor Juana, Malinche, Coyolxauhqui and
Other Rebels with a Cause. Austin, TX: University of Texas
Press, 2014. 41-53.
Gupta, Akhil, and James Ferguson. Beyond Culture: Space,
Identity, and the Politics of Difference. Cultural Anthropology
7/1 (February 1992): 6-23.
Keating, AnaLouise, editor. Making Choices: Writing, Spirituality,
Sexuality, and the Political, An I nterview with AnaLouise Keating
(1991). In Gloria Anzalda: Interviews/Entrevistas. New
York, NY: Routledge, 2000. 151-176.
Mora, Pat. Nepantla, Essays from the Land in the Middle.
Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1993.

22

Paz, Octavio. Sor Juana or, The Traps of Faith. Trans. Margaret
Sayers Peden. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 1988.
Reynolds, Julie. The Nepantla Experiment: Five Latina Artists and
Writers Embark on a New Kind of Collaboration. El Andar
(November 1995): 10.
Wilson-Powell, MaLin, editor. Kathy Vargas: Photographs, 19712000. Exhibition catalog. San Antonio, TX: The Marion
Koogler McNay Art Museum, 2000.

Notes
1 Scholars debate the exact year of Sor Juanas birth, creating
a variance of about three years, and establish either 1648 or
1651 as her birth year. For the purposes of this essay, I defer
to Octavio Paz and Alicia Gaspar de Alba, whose work tracks
the ongoing conversation on this topic. Therefore, I use the
earlier date of 1648. See Octavio Paz, Sor Juana or, The Traps
of Faith and Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Chapter 1, The Politics of
Location of la Dcima Muse: Prelude to an Interview.
2 Paz, 65.
3 de la Cruz, A Sor Juana Anthology, 2.
4 de la Cruz, The Reply to Sor Philotea, in A Sor Juana Anthology, 205-244.
5 de la Cruz, The Reply to Sor Philotea, 211.
6 Paz, 86.
7 de la Cruz, The Reply to Sor Philotea, 212.
8 Ibid., 212.
9 Gaspar de Alba, 44.
10 Alan Trueblood, Introduction, in A Sor Juana Anthology, 5-6.
11 Trueblood, Introduction, 7, and Paz, Chapter 25, An Ill-Fated
Letter, 389-410.
12 Paz, 445.
13 For more information about this portrait see Paz, 231-238.
14 Crdova, 449-467.
15 Gupta and Ferguson, 18.
16 Anzalda, Borderlands/La Frontera, 237.

18 Keating, 176.
19 Anzalda, Borderlands/La Frontera, 237-38.
20 Anzalda, Entre Amricas, 379.
21 Wilson-Powell, 10.

17 Mora, 10.

23

Tina Fuentes
Tres Palmas
48 x 96
Mixed Media
2014
24

Tina Fuentes
Confesional
60 x 48
Mixed Media
2014
25

26

Tina Fuentes
Nido IV

Tina Fuentes
Nido V

24 x 24
Mixed Media
2014

24 x 24
Mixed Media
2014

Tina Fuentes
Hombre con Seis Frutas
24 x 24
Mixed Media
2014

Tina Fuentes
Hombre con Frutas
24 x 24
Mixed Media
2014
27

Delilah Montoya
Casta 9
24 x 32
Digital Photography
2014
28

Delilah Montoya
Casta 12
24 x 32
Digital Photography
2014

Delilah Montoya
Casta 2
24 x 32
Digital Photography
2014
29

Delilah Montoya
Casta 7
24 x 32
Digital Photography
2014
30

Delilah Montoya
Casta 7A
24 x 32
Digital Photography
2014

Delilah Montoya
Casta 3
24 x 32
Digital Photography
2014

Delilah Montoya
Casta 3A
24 x 32
Digital Photography
2014
31

Delilah Montoya
Casta 10
24 x 32
Digital Photography
2014
32

Delilah Montoya
Casta 13
24 x 32
Digital Photography
2014

Delilah Montoya
Casta 4
24 x 32
Digital Photography
2014

Delilah Montoya
Casta 5
24 x 32
Digital Photography
2014
33

Kathy Vargas
Dgale a Jesusita
24 x 20
Hand Colored
Gelatin Silver Print
2014
34

Kathy Vargas
Piata Party
24 x 20
Hand Colored Gelatin Silver Print
2014

Kathy Vargas
Pony Boy
24 x 20
Hand Colored Gelatin Silver Print
2014
35

Kathy Vargas
Kiddie Park: Airplane Ride
24 x 20
Hand Colored Gelatin Silver Print
2014
36

Kathy Vargas
Kiddie Park: Boat Ride
24 x 20
Hand Colored Gelatin Silver Print
2014

Kathy Vargas
Toys: Doll
20 x 16
Hand Colored
Gelatin Silver Print
2014
37

Kathy Vargas
Clothes: Grass Dress
24 x 20
Hand Colored Gelatin Silver Print
2014
38

Kathy Vargas
Clothes: Fire Dog
24 x 20
Hand Colored Gelatin Silver Print
2014

Kathy Vargas
Clothes: I Love Mommy Romper
24 x 20
Hand Colored Gelatin Silver Print
2014

Kathy Vargas
Clothes: Rose Dress
24 x 20
Hand Colored Gelatin Silver Print
2014
39

Kathy Vargas
Toys: Teddy Bear
20 x 16
Hand Colored
Gelatin Silver Print
2014
40

Tina Fuentes
Biography
Born in 1949 in San Angelo and raised in Odessa, Texas,
Tina Fuentes earned B.F.A. (1973) and M.F.A. degrees (1975)
at North Texas State University in Denton, Texas, where
she trained in painting, drawing and printmaking. Fuentes
commenced her teaching career in public schools and
went on to teach at the University of Albuquerque and the
University of New Mexico. Since 1986, she has taught at the
School of Art at Texas Tech University, where she directed
the school from 2009 to 2013; she holds the rank of Full
Professor.
Included among Fuentes solo exhibitions are Frutos de
mi vida, Nicolaysen Art Museum, Casper, Wyoming, 2013;
Tina Fuentes: Dibujos y Pinturas, South Plaines College
Fine Arts Department, Levelland, Texas, 2010; Frutos de
Tina Fuentes, The McCormick Gallery, Midland College,
Midland, Texas, 2010; Maestros Tejanos: Tina Fuentes,
Dallas Latino Culture Center, Dallas, 2009; Luz y Espacios,
De Corazon Gallery, Dallas, 2007; and One Woman Show:
Dibujos y Pinturas de la Desnuda, Cabrillo College Gallery,
Aptos, California, 1992.
Her group shows and museum exhibitions include Ole!
Ann Street Gallery, Newburgh, New York, 2013; AMOA Arthouse 5x7 Show 2012, Arthouse at the Jones Center,
Austin, 2012; Arte Tejano: De Campos, Barrios y
Fronteras, OSDE Espacio de Arte, Buenos Aires, Argentina,
2011; Welcome to Zhuzhou Enjoy Our Ancestral Culture:
The Exhibition of Art Works from Home and Overseas,
Zhuzhou, Hunan, China, 2007; Quinceaera/Fifteen Years
of Womens Work, Mission Cultural Center for Latino

Arts, San Francisco, California, 2003; Surface Tensions,

Galveston Arts Center, Galveston, Texas, 2002; and Latina
Women Exhibit, Governors Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2000.
Fuentes has participated extensively as an exhibition juror
and has served as a member of the Visual Arts Panels of the
New Mexico State Arts Division and the Texas Commission
on the Arts. She has also served as juror and board member
of the Albuquerque Arts Board 1% for Art Program.
Fuentess art was the subject of El Arte de Tina Fuentes,
a documentary film produced by the National Education
Television Association. Her works are part of the permanent
collections of the Nicolaysen Art Museum in Casper, the
National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, the
Albuquerque Museum and the Room Collection of Mexican
American Art Prints at the Benson Latin American Collection,
The University of Texas at Austin. She is represented by the
Davis & Cline Gallery in Ashland, Oregon and Charles Adams
Gallery in Lubbock, Texas.

41

Artist Statement
Female & Cross
For thirty years now, I have realized my art in drawings,
paintings and prints and have found the exploration of
the various techniques to be rewarding. Beyond the
advancement of my technical skills, I have been rewarded
by seeing my inner thoughts and energies come to fruition
in two-dimensional form.
Throughout my artistic explorations, I have consistently
used the human form. The figures have gone through
several transformations. They have been literally stated;
they have been hidden in shadows. At times, they have
been defined by delicate sensuous, linear qualities that
intrigue the viewer. At other times, the figures have taken
on more ominous qualities, becoming dark, foreboding and
mysterious forms. Within the 1990s, another transformation
occurred in my exploration of the human form. My
exploration turned to an examination of the female form
in connection to the symbol of the cross. The Female
& Cross metaphor surfaced in my art as a metaphor for
feminine strength and power. In order to facilitate my
exploration of the theme, I constructed an eight-foot cross
and used it in conjunction with a live model. Revealed in
three dimensions, the model and cross helped me to realize
the potential for reinterpretation of a symbol traditionally
lined to a male figure.
As part of this ongoing development of the theme, I
investigated the metaphor outside of the confines of my
studio. Upon traveling to the city of San Cristobal de las
Casas in highland Chiapas, I visited the villages of Chamula
and Romerillo to view their mountain crosses. These
immense crosses are viewed as manifestations of both
42

god and creator ancestors. At times they are either or both

genders. My goal was to travel as both an artist and observer,
to explore and to try to understand the fusion of ancestor,
god, man and woman that these crosses represent to the
Maya. With the notes, drawings and photos from the trip
consolidated and studied, I continued to work on the cross
image with what I believe has been an even fuller sense of
its potential meaning.
As the work has evolved, I have had the opportunity to
expand my research beyond the two-dimensional format. In
1998-99, I was able to expand my studio medium into the
word of film via computer. Introduction to and involvement
with this technology has begun to provide a viable dialogue
for my images. Thus, a reshaping of the visual growth
continues to unfold.
Over the past couple of years, my works have embraced
and integrated illusions of space inspired by land/space that
exists here in the South Plains of West Texas. These artistic
engagements with issues of geographical/atmospheric
phenomena have led to my broadening interest in the
vastness of the arid spaces of the desert corridor that extends
beyond the boundaries of West Texas. These explorations
will be taking me to the Mexican Chihuahua Desert and
the Sierra Madre Occidental. My journey will continue onto
the Sonora Desert in the Tucson, Arizona region. Taking
my drawing tools, camera and movie projector to these
locations to document the spaces will enable me to return
to my studio with ideas and images that will filter into the
work produced.

Delilah Montoya
Biography

Delilah Montoya was born in 1955 in Fort Worth, Texas,
was raised in the Midwest and studied art in New Mexico,
the home of generations of her family. She supported herself
as a medical photographer on the way to earning an MFA in
Printmaking (1999) and an MFA in Studio Art (1994) from
the University of New Mexico. Since then she has taught at
various universities and exhibited widely around the nation
and abroad. In 2001, she began teaching photography at
the University of Houston; she is currently Full Professor at
that institution.
Montoya has had an active exhibition schedule,
participating in many important group shows, including
those at the Albuquerque, Oakland, Shanghai and Buenos
Aires art museums. She participated in the historic
Common Ground: Discovering Community in 150 Years
of Art, at the Corcoran Museum of Art, in Washington,
DC in 2004 and the highly reviewed traveling exhibition,
Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art, of the
Smithsonian American Art Museum, which was hosted by
major institutions in Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, California
and Utah. She has been accorded various solo exhibitions,
including the following: Borders, Alcove Show, PDNB
Gallery, Dallas, 2012; La Llorona in Lillithss Garden,
The Institute for Womens Studies and Services, Denver,
2009; Retrospective: Photographs by Delilah Montoya,
La Llorona Gallery, Chicago, 2008; Fuerzas Naturales:
Against Type (Two Person Installation), Magnan Emrich
Contemporary, New York City, 2008; Sed: Trail of Thirst,
Patricia Corriea Gallery, Santa Monica, 2008; Women

Boxers: The New Warriors, Andrew Smith Gallery, Santa

Fe, 2006; Women Boxers: The New Warriors, MacKinney
Avenue Contemporary Arts Center, Dallas, 2006; Women
Boxers: The New Warriors, Project Row House, Houston,
2006; Guadalupe En Piel, Works by Montoya, Instituto
Cultural Mexicano, Los Angeles, 2022; El Sagrado Corazn/
The Sacred Heart, Intersection for the Arts, San Francisco, 1995.
Montoyas works have become part of the permanent
collections of, among others, the Los Angeles County
Museum of Art, the Houston Museum of Fine Art, the
Mexican Museum of San Francisco, The Bronx Museum, the
Smithsonian Institute, the Wight Gallery of UCLA, Stanford
University Libraries, the Armand Hammer Museum of Los
Angeles, the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe and the Williams
College Museum of Art in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
Montoyas works are represented by Andrew Smith Gallery,
Fine American Photography in Santa Fe; Photograph Do
Not Bend in Denton, Texas; and Robert Hughes Gallery in
San Antonio, Texas.

43

Artist Statement
Contemporary Casta Portraiture: Nuestra Calidad
As a Chicana artist, my own personal quest in image making
is the discovery and articulation of Chicano culture, and
the icons, which elucidate the dense history of Aztln. My
artistic vision is an autobiographical exploration, but one
that has far reaching implications for my community and
the preservation of its unique history.
Contemporary Casta Portraiture: Nuestra Calidad
is the investigation of the cultural and biological forms
of hybridity. Looking at this concept as a signifier of
colonialism, the portraits echo the aesthetic and cultural
markers formulated by the Casta paintings of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries in present-day familial settings
of New World multicultural communities. The idea is to
witness the resonance of colonialism as a substructure of
our contemporary society.
In the years following the conquest of Mexico in 1521,
most people in the New World fell into three distinct
ethno-racial categories: First Nation (indigenous people),
peninsular Spaniards (European) and Africans (both
enslaved and free). By the early seventeenth century, these
categories broke down quickly and a caste system based on
miscegenation was being defined throughout the colonial
realm. Contemporary Casta Portraiture: Nuestra Calidad
aims to demonstrate that our heritage comes from this
mixed ethno-racial colonial social structure.
Casta paintings are part of the eighteenth-century colonial
Latin America art tradition. Generally presented as a group
of sixteen portraits, each painting depicts a racial mixing or
mestizaje of the population found in New Spain. The basic
formula illustrates a couple with one or two children, who
44

are rendered in a domestic or occupation environment.

An inscription describing the ethno-racial make-up of the
mother, the father and the child(ren) usually appears as
verbiage within the painting or above the family unit. The
offspring is given a unique ethno-racial definition. Each of
the sixteen ethno-racial mixtures is given a classification,
such as mestizo (de india y espaol) or mulato (de negra
y espaol). The Castas, as a series of paintings, illustrate a
social hierarchy, with the peninsular Spaniards (espaol)
located above the First Nation (indio) and African (negro)
family units. The lighter or more European the ethno-racial
mix, the closer it is positioned to the peninsular Spaniards.
Historians have linked the emphasis on classification and
organization found in these genre paintings to the influence
of The Age of Enlightenment. The paintings illustrate the
typical clothing for the different social classes. They reveal
details of architectural space and home life and present
meticulous depictions of everyday objects, native flora and
fauna and foodstuffs. These depictions speak not only about
a fascination with race, but also to the leading philosophical
and scientific preoccupations of that period.
The fact that the majority of Casta paintings in existence
are in Europe rather than the Americas suggests they were
collected as souvenirs that illustrate the native plants and
diverse peoples of the colonies. The Casta paintings are
also attributed to the Costumbrismo art movement which
depicted daily life and ordinary circumstances as a type of
Spanish folk tradition.
Although the use and purpose for production of Casta
paintings remains unclear, these paintings generally suggest
a fascination with race and limpieza de sangre (purity of
blood) that characterized colonial mentalities. Spaniards
used their elaborate system of classification to maintain

social and political control, allowing the pure-blooded

to hold the top position in colonial society. I believe that
the described colonial caste system still exists as sort of
a footprint in our contemporary global culture, and it can
be documented through a series of domestic photographic
portraits that present various social and ethnic families
whose heritage derives from the colonial system of the
Americas and the United States. In my mind the Americas
as a whole, including the United States, are not only
connected historically but also genetically and culturally. It is
our lived reality.
Like the Casta paintings, this body of work represents
household units. However, Contemporary Casta Portraiture:
Nuestra Calidad does not define the members by means
of colonial terminology. Instead, the ethno-racial mixture
is represented by a DNA study of the mother and fathers
global ancestral migration. All the families depicted in the
series trace their ancestry to American colonial communities
with possible miscegenation in their past. As collaborators
for these familial environmental portraits, the participants
consented to share their National Geographic Genographic
DNA analysis with the contemporary portrait study.
In an effort to reveal social and cultural types, the
portraits were photographed either at the subjects
public or private space. The names of the families remain
anonymous in an attempt to direct the viewers attention
away from the individuals and to the genre or calidad of
the sitter. Although the series is still in progress, the end
result of the investigation will be a collection of sixteen
or more portraits that represent the social structure of the
colonial calidad as it exists today. The hope is to reveal the
footprint of the colonial structure within our contemporary
world, which is based on the ethno-racial social structure.

The premise is that the longer a family line resides in the

United States, the more ethno-racial it will become. Like
our national borders, the ethno-racial social structure is and
has always been very porous. After all, the Genome Project
shows that we all originated out of East Africa and migrated
across continents. With current hyper-globalization, all
cultures will soon genetically reunite. Chicanos are already
globally reunited with the appearance of all racial types in
their DNA. As suggested by Jos Vasconcelos Caldern in
1925, somos la raza csmica.
Production of Contemporary Casta Portraiture:
Nuestra Calidad is funded in part by grants from Transart
Foundation, Artist to Artist Fund, New Mexico Artist Match
Fund, Hatch Fund and the University of Houston Small
Research Grant, with contributions from Chon Noriega,
Gilberto Crdenas, Joe Aker, Surpik Angelini, Celia Muoz,
Sam Coronado, Ann Tucker, Connie Cortez, Ann Leimer,
Zoanna Maney, Tere Romo and Rick Custer. With so much
gratitude for the donors encouragement and support, they
are thanked for their generosity.

45

Kathy Vargas
Biography
Artist/photographer Kathy Vargas is Associate Professor
of Art at the University of the Incarnate Word. Born in
1950 and raised in San Antonio, Texas, Vargas earned
a BA in Fine Art (1981) and an MFA (1984), both with a
concentration in photography, from the University of Texas
at San Antonio. After serving as the Director of the Visual
Arts Program of the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center in San
Antonio, from 1985 to 2000, Vargas began teaching at the
University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio. In 2006,
she was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure at that
institution. From 2006 to 2011, she served as the director of
the Semmes Gallery as well as chair of the Art Department
at Incarnate Word.
Kathy Vargas has had one solo exhibitions at Sala Uno in
Rome, Galera Juan Martin in Mexico City, Centro Recoleta
in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the Instituto Tecnolgico
de Monterrey, Mexico, and retrospectives at Universitat
Erlangen-Nurnberg, Germany, and the McNay Art Museum,
San Antonio. Group shows include Hospice: A Photographic
Inquiry, a national traveling exhibit commissioned by
the Corcoran Gallery, Washington D.C.; Transacciones, IX
Bienal Internacional de Fotografa, Canary Islands; Foto
Fest Presents at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art,
Russia; Regards Croises at Galerie Prevert, Provence,
France; Aztln Hoy at Canal de Isabel II, Madrid, Spain;
and Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation (CARA) at
UCLA. Ms. Vargass works have been shown internationally
at such venues as Galleria Fotocamera in Grosseto, Italy;
Galleria Sala Uno, Rome, Italy; Galera Juan Martn, in Mexico
46

City; and Amerika Haus in Stuttgart, Germany. Her works

are part of the permanent collections of the Smithsonians
American Art Museum, the Toledo Art Museum, the
Southeast Museum of Photography, the National Museum
of Mexican Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the San
Antonio Museum of Art and the Sprint Collection. Her
work has been reviewed by The New York Times, among
others. Former boards on which she sat include Art Matters,
New York, and the National Campaign for Freedom of
Expression, Seattle, and for four years she was a member of
San Antonios Public Art Committee.
Ms. Vargas was named 2005 Texas Two-Dimensional
Artist of the Year by the Texas Commission on the Arts.
And her works are represented by the Laudelina Martnez
Gallery in upstate New York, the Noel Baza Gallery in San
Diego and Prographica Gallery in Seattle, Washington.

Artist Statement
Innocent Age
This series, which currently has about sixty photos in it
and is still growing, deals with the idealization of childhood
versus its realities. The idea for the series came to me when
the local news ran a story about a little boy who had been
locked in a closet and starved by his family until he died on
Christmas Eve. A school photo of the little boy flashed onto
the screen, and his face had the biggest smile on it. He
looked happy, and I realized that, looking at that picture, no
one would ever have known he was suffering. For abused
children, it seems, a photo is not proof of anything.
Since Ive always tended to doubt the veracity of photos,
Im not surprised by this. But it did compel me to create
a visual reconsideration of childhood. I re-photographed
images of children: some I know/knew and some I
dont. More importantly, I know how two of them turned
out: one, loved and cherished, turned out very, very well,
and another, verbally abused, got a sorrowful life. But I
dont want to say which is which, because the point is that
one cannot tell from looking at their pictures.
I also created sub-series of clothing and toys: the leftover
debris of childhood, so to speak. They are divided into roses
and grass. Roses are a reference to happy childhoods: a
bed of roses comprising familial love and strength. The
opposite is the grass childhood: the childhood in which
it is possible for a child to be dropped into an unmarked
grave, either literally or figuratively.
The final images are portraits of rose children, those
who know they are loved and cherished, along with the
masks children wear, whether it is a mask a child shows a

parent for the sake of survival or a mask the parent places on

the child by name-callingfoolish, ugly, worthlessa label
the child must spend the rest of his/her life trying to outgrow.

47

Exhibition Checklist
Tina Fuentes
OKane Gallery
Tres Palmas, 48 x 96, Mixed Media, 2014
Confesional, 60 x 48, Mixed Media, 2014
MECA
Nido IV, 24 x 24, Mixed Media, 2014
Nido V, 24 x 24, Mixed Media, 2014
Hombre con Seis Frutas, 24 x 24, Mixed Media, 2014

OKane Gallery
Toys: Doll, 20 x 16,
Hand Colored Gelatin Silver Print, 2014
Toys: Teddy Bear, 20 x 16,
Hand Colored Gelatin Silver Print, 2014
Clothes: Grass Dress, 24 x 20,
Hand Colored Gelatin Silver Print, 2014

Hombre con Frutas, 24 x 24, Mixed Media, 2014

Clothes: Fire Dog, 24 x 20,

Hand Colored Gelatin Silver Print, 2014

Delilah Montoya

Clothes: I Love Mommy Romper, 24 x 20,

Hand Colored Gelatin Silver Print, 2014

OKane Gallery
Casta 2, 24 x 32, Digital Photography, 2014
Casta 4, 24 x 32, Digital Photography, 2014
Casta 5, 24 x 32, Digital Photography, 2014
Casta 9, 24 x 32, Digital Photography, 2014
Casta 12, 24 x 32, Digital Photography, 2014
MECA
Casta 3, 24 x 32, Digital Photography, 2014
Casta 3A, 24 x 32, Digital Photography, 2014
Casta 7, 24 x 32, Digital Photography, 2014
Casta 7A, 24 x 32, Digital Photography, 2014
Casta 10, 24 x 32, Digital Photography, 2014
Casta 13, 24 x 32, Digital Photography, 2014

48

Kathy Vargas

Clothes: Rose Dress, 24 x 20,

Hand Colored Gelatin Silver Print, 2014
MECA
Dgale a Jesusita, 24 x 20,
Hand Colored Gelatin Silver Print, 2014
Piata Party, 24 x 20,
Hand Colored Gelatin Silver Print, 2014
Pony Boy, 24 x 20,
Hand Colored Gelatin Silver Print, 2014
Kiddie Park: Airplane Ride, 24 x 20,
Hand Colored Gelatin Silver Print, 2014
Kiddie Park: Boat Ride, 24 x 20,
Hand Colored Gelatin Silver Print, 2014