Texas-based interdisciplinary artist Ruby De La Fuente, has been honing her skills in 2-Dimensional art since, 2011. Originally, Ruby’s practice began in printmaking, oil and encaustic paintings. It has evolved from creating evocative paintings of domestic violence to prints on motherhood. As her life transforms, she’s found herself going back to her roots in printmaking. Currently, she’s exploring the challenges of motherhood, through race and personal narratives.

Celeste De Luna is an artist/printmaker from the lower Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. Rooted in a Chicana feminist perspective, she seeks to tease out the intricacies of living in and along the borderlands in her art as well as a narrative world builder who envisions the past, present, and futuristic frontera. De Luna is a self-taught printmaker whose work includes large-scale woodcut prints and fabric installation. She is a co-founder of the socially engaged art collective Las Imaginistas, an accomplished home cook, and cultural advocate. Her recipes appear in the book “Don’t Count the Tortillas” by Adan Medrano and she also appears in his film Truly Texas Mexican advocating for traditional food, street vendors, and cultural lifeways. Currently, she lives in San Antonio, works out of her home studio, Metzli Press, and teaches Mexican-American Studies and Art for Northwest Vista College. “A true daughter of the borderlands, her art celebrates the quotidian and the exceptional on the border,” writes Inés Hernández-Ávila. You may find more information about her work at www.celestedeluna.com

Josie Del Castillo is an artist born and raised in Brownsville, Texas. In 2020, she earned her MFA from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Best known for her vivid portraits, Del Castillo focuses on the empowerment of the female form, personal growth, and reflections of her Mexican American upbringing on La Frontera.

Like most borderland cities, Del Castillo’s hometown of Brownsville is culturally and politically complex. Yet, Del Castillo ignores negative representations and perpetuated stereotypes of the region and its border communities by politicians and news media. Instead, she focuses on representing the region with warmth and positivity through colorful depictions as vibrant as its people.

Her work combines self-portraiture, portraits of community members, and the scenic landscapes of the Rio Grande Valley. Most recently, she’s incorporated her fondness for plants, which she sees as a symbol of growth. She explains, “We all grow under different conditions and have specific needs to remember to nurture.”

Anel I. Flores’ craft manifests as graphic memoir, poetry, fiction, silver, and paintings, as a continuation and evolution of the conversations started by the Xicana/e/x movement in art and literature, now infused by latina/e/x, transfeminism, intersectionality, queer politics and resistencia. Her work combines, oscillates between, and blurs these different disciplines in an ultimate goal to provide ancestral healing, present day joy, and a re-centering of Womyn of Color, Latina/e/x, BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ Womyn, Femmes and Gender Non-Binary folx. She is founder and director of La Otra Taller Nepantla Residency and an MFA in Creative Writing. Her awards include Catalyst for Change, Best Local Poet, Women’s Advocate of the Year, the Nebrija Creadores Award, Best Of SA Author, Chingona in Literature Award, Ancinas Award at Squaw Valley, NALAC Fund for the Arts Award, Accion Women Inspiring Women & others. She is co-editor of forthcoming Jota Anthology and author of Lambda award nominated book Empanada: A Lesbiana Story en Probaditas.

Michel Flores Tavizón is an artist, printmaker and graphic designer born and raised in Matamoros, Tamaulipas. Her work focuses on topics like women’s issues, Mexican culture, identity and immigration. She received her BFA in Art with concentration on graphic design from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in 2021. “Ni de aquí ni de allá” is a woodcut print reflecting the duality of cultures in border towns. This is a self-portrait inspired by Frida Kahlo’s “Las dos Fridas” painting, portraying my two identities. The Mexican side, which represents my roots, and the American side that represents where I stand now. Standing in between two countries, makes you feel like you belong to neither, and to both at the same time. Gloria Anzaldúa has written about a similar feeling in her books, “Living on borders and in margins, keeping intact one's shifting and multiple identity and integrity, is like trying to swim in a new element, an 'alien' element.”

Ruby E. Garza (b.1985, Brownsville Texas) is a multidisciplinary Chicana artist who received her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (2019). Garza’s work deals with personal childhood memories, machismo, and immigration related issues. She has had solo exhibitions at AreVivo Art Studio, Brownsville (2018) and the Carlotta K. Petrina Cultural Center, Brownsville (2018). She has also been included in exhibitions throughout Texas including the Brownsville Fine Art Museum (2018); PlatForm 204, Harlingen (2018); Mi Vida Loca Gallery, Corpus Christi (2019); La Peña and the Visual Arts Center, Austin (2020). Garza has volunteered as an art instructor and gallery assistant at the Carlotta K. Petrina Cultural Center for students from low-income homes and is currently a small business owner and gallery director of La Chicharra Studio which functions as a community space for exhibitions, workshops, and other public events in Brownsville, Texas.

Nansi Guevara is a designer, artist, & teacher based in Brownsville, Texas. Originally from Laredo, Texas, she holds a bachelor’s in Fine Arts in Design from the University of Texas at Austin and a Master’s in Education from Harvard University. She is currently focused on design, education, and community public art to create spaces of resistance and affirmation, and economies of community cultural wealth and support. She is a graphic designer, an illustrator, and a textile/rasquache based public artist. She runs her own freelance design & education practice, Corazón Contento, based out of Brownsville, Texas. She is an adjunct lecturer at the School of Art at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Nansi has been awarded residencies, fellowships, & grants from the NEA, Artplace America, a Blade of Grass, NALAC, and most recently the Santa Fe Art Institute Artist Residency.

Beatriz Guzmán Velásquez is a visual artist and educator living and working in the Texas-U.S. Southwest/Mexican border region. She received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is an alumna from the New York Studio School and the University of Texas-Pan American. For the year 2021-2022, she is participating in DocX Archive Lab Fellowship with the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. Recently, she formed part of the National Association of Latinos Arts and Culture Fellowship and completed her residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. In 2019, she joined the New York Foundation for the Arts Immigrant Artist Program and was awarded Artist-In-Residence at Lazuli Residency in Vermont. She is the founder of Juana Simona, a space dedicated to creativity and the stewardship of the land.

Cultivated on both sides of the South Texas/ Tamaulipas frontera, QueenKillahBee fuses past and present sounds and juxtaposes seemingly unrelated genres to stir up both body and soul, keeping music selection as diverse as the Rio Grande Valley cultura. She sees art, music, and dancing as a form of connection and expression and her own way of decolonizing and rebelling against the machismo that has been so deeply ingrained.

From her beginnings with Perreo Peligroso, a series of parties by women, for women and lgbtq+folx, she aimed to create an environment so they could feel safe and completely comfortable dancing and feeling themselves al 💯, and to have a space free of machismo and enjoy the night out without getting harassed at every turn.

As a woman who has unceasingly worked to uplift others, Queenkillahbee definitely puts great effort into reminding women+ trans, non-gender, & LGBTQs that they are strong, powerful, and deserving.

Texas Born & Valley-raised artist Alexis Marie Ramos, originally from Weslaco, currently attends the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, College of Fine Arts pursuing her MFA. Her art is centralized around La Cocina, and the many roles women play and the intricate roles of food, religion, folk medicine, folk healing, and curanderismo play with the cities along the Rio Grande Valle/ Mexico border. Drawing inspiration from growing up In the Rio Grande Valle many of her sculptures, installations, paintings, illustrate the remedies used to treat these culture-bound syndromes. Ramos who completed her BFA at UTRGV with a focus on ceramics was one of the few students who learned the art of Lost wax bronze casting having collaborated on several monumental sculptures in the Rio Grande Valley.

Ramos explores the local culturas relationships with food, religion, folk medicine, and the kitchen curanderas who pass on these traditions. Focusing on the process and practice using vignettes from childhood. Ramos is focusing on creating an archive of how local Latinos of the region heal the home, the family, and even how commercial objects are imbued with folk magic. Often ingredients collected from back yards are used as both medicine and essential sustenance. Ramos explores the borders where foods, ingredients, and folk medicine customs blur. View more of her works at https://www.instagram.com/ms.alexisramos/ or https://alexismramos.wixsite.com/alexismramos

Rawmirez is a cultural worker and community advocate in the Rio Grande Valley along the US-Mexico Border. He is a multi-disciplinary artist working through visual art, installation, crafts, and performance. Rawmirez is the Director of Raw Creativity for Trucha, a multimedia collective and online platform focused on the arts, culture and social movements of the region.

Born and raised in the Rio Grande Valley, Julietta Rivera is a lifelong artist, maker, and storyteller. She is currently a graduate student in the Creative Writing Department at UTRGV and is working on a graphic memoir titled Torcida. She brings her authentic and unique voice to bring stories to life both with her artwork and written word. She credits Gloria Anzaldua for allowing her to be her bona fide self both in her writing, art, and personal expression.

"There is a rebel inside of me-the Shadow Beast. It is part of me that refuses to take orders from outside authorities. It refuses to take orders from my conscious will, it threatens the sovereignty of my rulership. It is the part of me that hates constraints of any kind, even those self-imposed. At the least hint of limitations on my time or space by others, it kicks out with both feet.-Bolts."

-Gloria Anzaldua

Nydia Salinas, she/her (b.1998) is a visual artist who grew up in between Progreso, Texas and Nvo. Progreso, Mexico. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree- with a concentration in ceramics- from the University of Texas- Rio Grande Valley in 2020. Salinas recently participated in an International Artist Residency: Arquetopia (2021) on Pre-Columbian Ceramics in Puebla, Mexico thanks to the support of the Center for Latin American Arts at UTRGV. Salinas explores the dialect of the Rio Grande Valley, and bases the conversation around her work on linguistic theories from text. Her ceramic vessels invite the viewer into a headspace where they can embrace their tongue and reject the idea of a “standard language”. The dynamic of her upbringing- and the community she has encountered- is what inspired her journey in sharing the lived experiences of the people living on forced borderlands. Connect on website the nydiaspace.com or Instagram @_nydias

Jessica Denise Villegas is a multidisciplinary artist based in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas. She received her Bachelors of Fine Art at The University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley with a minor concentration in Mexican American Studies. Villegas has dedicated her artistic career to cultivating a new historical narrative, which is inclusive of the Latinx/Chicanx community. Focusing on border culture, politics, and social injustice. She utilizes clay as a tool to create vessels that produce a physical presence and acknowledgment of the long history of oppression and misrepresentation of the Latinx/Chicanx community in U.S. history. Her works have been recently featured at the Lufrano Gallery of Art, The University of North Florida (2021); Art Space Gallery, Richmond, VA (2020); Clay Art Center, Port Chester, NY (2021). View more of her works at jdenisevillegas.com.