In Southwest Contemporary Vol. 13: The Road, guest juror Aurora Tang reflects on the featured artists’ works in terms of movement, progress, and possibility.
The ten artists featured here approach the theme of The Road as a point of entry to engage critical issues of our times—from the environmental, sociopolitical, and cultural, to the profoundly personal—offering an expansive set of possibilities as to where a road might lead.
How do roads shape the ways in which we navigate the physical world? Carmen Selam’s (Yakama Nation and Comanche) paintings call attention to ancestral pathways, and consider the road’s capacity to connect as well as displace communities. Vahid Valikhani’s photographs of roads and signage can be seen as portraits of transportation infrastructure, featuring essential but often overlooked aspects of the built landscape. Julie Libersat explores notions of orientation and disorientation, through investigation into the directional signage, traffic cones, safety symbols, and wayfinding devices that dot our interstates and streets. Moira Garcia considers other types of tools that can help us find our way, turning to both footprints below and stars above as roadmaps for migration, past and present.
Who travels these roads? Jessica Sevilla’s video essays offer a personal narrative of the artist’s road trips into the Colorado River Delta and its ecosystems, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Verónica Gaona’s sculptural assemblages, made in part from salvaged metal from trucks, point to the migrant laborers traversing the stretch of road separating the United States and Mexico, and their role in the construction of new homes cross-border. Hannah Spector suggests a counter to the narrative of the Western roadway as backdrop to the rugged lone male crossing the frontier. Adelaide Theriault approaches the highway as a site of deep ecological memory, centering the point of view of its non-human inhabitants.
The road may be the ultimate liminal space, between here and there. Madeline Rupard transports viewers to a roadscape of constant gas stations and infinite skies, highlighting the sublime that can be experienced from the driver’s seat, witnessed through the windshield. Luke Rizzotto contemplates the embodied experience of driving a long stretch of highway, and the stream of consciousness that can unfold while traveling through a landscape, across time and space.
The road implies movement, progress, and the prospect of a way forward.
The ten artists featured in The Road are:
Verónica Gaona
Moira Garcia
Julie Libersat
Luke Rizzotto
Madeline Rupard
Carmen Selam
Jessica Sevilla
Hannah Spector
Adelaide Theriault
Vahid Valikhani
