 |
 |
|
|
|
Natalia Anciso
Natalia Anciso creates art predicated on realities and legends of her upbringing. Her works are visual records of family, community, and border culture along her native Rio Grande. These Borderlands are currently ravaged by poverty, human trafficking, and the escalating Mexican Drug War. The Rio Grande cuts one land and people in two, like a wound, bleeding a legacy of pain, tears, and struggle that have beset the area for generations. Anciso’s family has resided in this geographic territory for four generations.
Anciso researches vernacular arts like paño arte, handkerchief art believed to have emerged from Chicano prisoners in the 1940s, and the huipil, embroidered Mayan textiles worn by indigenous women in Southern and Central America. These art forms are reconfigured to tell contemporary stories of life along the Texas/Mexico border. Juxtaposing beautifully colored, watercolor-drawn images of flowers indigenous to Texas against stark, monochromatic media images, meticulously rendered in pen, offers the beauty of home against grisly depictions of the Mexican Drug War. Using these tools on domestic textiles such as handkerchiefs, pillowcases, and bed sheets, Anciso's work examines psycho-political struggles of life along La Frontera.
Natalia Anciso is a Chicana-Tejana visual artist and educator. Born and raised in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, she received her BA in Studio Art from The University of Texas at Austin in 2008. Anciso recently earned her Master of Fine Arts from the California College of the Arts in San Francisco. She lives and works in East Oakland.
| |
|
|
