Closing Reception: Les Chingones

Material Gallery presents Les Chingones, a group exhibition featuring the work of four celebrated contemporary artists based or with roots in Utah.

On view: June 6–July 11, 2025 (by appointment)
Artist talk/Opening reception: Friday, June 6, 5:30–6:00pm/6:00–9:00pm
Public gallery stroll: Friday, June 20, 6:00–8:00pm
Closing reception: Friday, July 11, 6:00–8:00pm

Les Chingones showcases the work of artists Andrew Alba, Kelly Tapia-Chuning, Horacio Rodriguez, and Sara Serratos. Their practices, spanning from sculpture to painting, ceramic, textiles, photography, and mixed media, boldly confront, reclaim, and reimagine the cultural, political, and personal landscapes of the Latinx experience in the American West.

These artists embody the term chingón/chingona—a Spanish slang expression reclaimed to signify power, resistance, and excellence. In Latinx culture, chingón/chingona is historically used to denote strength, resilience, and a rebellious spirit. Their work navigates a terrain shaped by colonization, migration, and generational memory. Les Chingones explores themes of identity, resilience, and transformation, often weaving humor, critique, and reverence into a complex visual language.

Together, their voices form a chorus—unapologetic, rooted, and chingón—as they carve out space for stories too often excluded in dominant art narratives. Les Chingones is an assertion of presence, a celebration of cultural hybridity, and a challenge to the systems that seek to contain it.

Image: Kelly Tapia-Chuning, when the Sun touches the Earth, dismantled serape, copper nails, 23 x 28 inches, 2025