EXHIBITION | August 23, 2022 – March 11, 2023
PROGRAM 10/7| Reception, Friday, October 7, 2022, 4:30-6:00 p.m. (Museum)
Juventino Aranda’s work expresses a search for identity at the intersection of Mexico and America. As the artist has stated, “I am Mexican and second generation ‘American.’ I am not Hispanic, Latino, and definitely not Spanish—even though I live everyday with the consequences of their conquest.” Aranda’s sharp-witted art navigates this cultural borderland, drawing from pre-Columbian sources as well as current affairs related to the social, political, and economic struggles of late capitalism and notions of the American dream. At the heart of his art and activist practices lie poignant themes of social aspiration and reflections of personal vulnerability veiled in a tenderness and humor meant to disarm.
The exhibition, Esperé Mucho Tiempo Pa Ver (I Have Waited a Long Time to See) presents new and past work from this burgeoning artist, marking Aranda’s first museum exhibition in eastern Washington. Born to Mexican immigrants in Walla Walla, Washington, much of his recent work draws on his family history and particularities of his childhood that speak to foreignness in his native land. Not unlike his personal experience of never fully ascribing to one cultural category, his artwork also blends and manipulates the categories of paintings and sculpture, craft and high art, and manufacturing and the handmade, as well as the formal and conceptual strategies of post-minimalist artists.
ABOUT | Juventino Aranda lives and works in Walla Walla and received his BFA from Eastern Washington University. Solo exhibitions of his work include Before I Wake (2022), In Dreams I Once Believed There Was a Future (2019) and Weed the Lawn and Feed the Roses (2017) all at the Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle as well as Pocket Full of Poises at the Frye Art Museum (2018). He has participated in group exhibitions at Terrain (2016, 2015) and Saranac Art Projects (2016) in Spokane, and Center on Contemporary Art, Seattle (2016), among other venues, and his works are in the collections of the Frye Art Museum, Tacoma Art Museum, and Microsoft Art Collection.
Organized by the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art WSU. Funding for this exhibition is provided by the Samuel H. and Patricia W. Smith Endowment, the Walla Walla Foundry, Nancy Spitzer, and members of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art WSU.
LOCATION | The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art WSU is located in the Crimson Cube (on Wilson Road across from Martin Stadium and the CUB) on the WSU Pullman campus. For more information please visit museum.wsu.edu/about.
