In 2024, I was Sachs Guest Curator at ICA Philadelphia. The resulting exhibition, Where I Learned to Look: Art From the Yard, was inspired by my grandfather’s yard and an observation: visual languages and strategies emerging from yard art appear in contemporary art practices in addition to their ongoing presence in actual yards across North America.
As an artist, I took the guest curatorial appointment as an opportunity to create new work in conversation with others included in the group show. Those works are documented here.
Video and mixed media assemblage
Videography by Sarah M. Vasquez
Featuring (in order of appearance) Ester Sanchez, Kristina Sanchez, Elaine O’Donnell, and Savian Enríquez
From the exhibition label:
“The Virgin of Guadalupe combines the Christian Virgin Mary with the Aztec goddess Coatlicue and other sacred figures of the “New World.” Sometimes referred to as the Goddess of the Americas, the figure is a result of the Spanish-Catholic invasion of North and South America.
Preparing La Virgen shows the Sanchez family preparing a shrine in their backyard in Marfa, Texas. The sculptural installation was erected in the late 1990s to mark the location where the Virgin appeared in the trunk of a nearby tree. The video documents the family methodically preparing for December 12, Guadalupe’s feast day. Overlaying the documentary video is a narrative written from the perspective of the Virgin. She recounts her origins and contemplates her neighbor (artist Donald Judd), the prayers she receives, and her dual status as art object and pilgrimage site.
From the text’s multiple contemporary and historical reference points to the use of an upturned bathtub as the capilla (small chapel), this altar installation is animated by the Chicana/o/x sensibilities of domesticana and rasquachismo, culturally-specific terms for the idea of creating the most with the least.”
Plywood, marble chips, and acrylic
From the exhibition label:
“Franco often quotes and reinterprets images and language he encounters in his work as an art historian. “Giant White Snake (probably Mescalero Apache)” is inspired by a pictograph at Hueco Tanks, a state park near El Paso, Texas. At this unique site, snake pictographs point to water gathered in various huecos (naturally occurring granite “tanks”). This was vital knowledge for those traveling through this oasis in the Chihuahuan desert over millennia. The snake is composed of marble chips sourced from popular home and garden supply stores and is, ironically, reminiscent of marble used in Classical sculptures. The title is a humorous nod to the titling conventions of anthropologists who have studied the site.”