November 11 – December 15, 2023
Sangre Mía — Bianca Velasquez & Kelly Tapìa-Chuning
Contact us for pricing and availability.
Kelly Tapìa-Chuning, Mestiza (a woman of Spanish and Indigenous descent), 2022, latex interior paint on vintage serape, 46” x 89”
Bianca Velasquez, Your Best Behavior, 2023, glass beads, recycled canvas, 17.5” x 21.5”
Kelly Tapìa-Chuning, A Study of Halves, 2023, dismantled serape, copper nails 20.5” x 22”
Bianca Velasquez, The Labor Bears Rotten Fruit, 2023, glass beads, acrylic paint, recycled canvas, 17” x 25”
Kelly Tapìa-Chuning, Vendida, 2022, latex interior paint on vintage serape, 19” x 44”
Bianca Velasquez, What Haunts You The Most, 2022, glass beads, acrylic paint, recycled canvas, 22” x 17.8”
Kelly Tapìa-Chuning, A Study of Scale, 2023, dismantled serape, copper nails, 9.5” x 18.5”
Bianca Velasquez, Tu Y Tu Caballo También, 2023, glass beads, acrylic paint, recycled canvas, 18” x 22”
Kelly Tapìa-Chuning, Guera (slang for a white girl), 2022, latex interior paint on vintage serape, 45” x 93”
Bianca Velasquez, Easy To Raise, 2023, glass beads, acrylic paint, recycled canvas, 31” x 31”
Kelly Tapìa-Chuning, Pocha, 2022, latex interior paint on vintage serape, 14.5” x 35”
Kelly Tapìa-Chuning, noche del sol carmesí (evening of the crimson sun), 2023, dismantled serape (Mexican blanket), copper nails, 32” x 74”
Kelly Tapìa-Chuning, Loteria Cards, 2019, linocut on rag paper composition: 7.5” x 11” sheet: 14.5” x 18” (edition of 4)
Bianca Velasquez
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Bianca Velasquez (b. 1993, she/her) is a Salt Lake City native who has been involved with the arts and music community for over a decade. Velasquez is currently a freelance writer for several publications including Southwest Contemporary, Hyperallergic, SLUG Magazine and Visit Salt Lake and holds the co-chair position for SLC-based nonprofit Mestizo Arts. As a visual artist, Velasquez works in acrylics, digital art, beadwork and more. After working as SLUG Magazine's Managing Editor at 25, Velasquez has poured herself into her visual art, captivating her relationship to family, herself and the act of recording. Velasquez' beadwork interrogates the process of negotiating space, both physically on the canvas and emotionally as she carves out space within herself for the lengthy task of self realization.
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The natural and repetitive act of beading has unexpectedly provided me a therapeutic outlet for deep internal wounds surrounding PTSD and generational trauma that has recently been vividly and consistently surfacing. As a person who uses work and a state of productivity as a method to “quiet the noise,” beadwork has handed me a tool to chip away at the internal work necessary for healing. It has also opened a connecting door to my Honduran lineage through the beading tradition. While my work can be abstract and primal, I hope to tell short stories through details that resonate with others who have ever felt the same type of intangible despair that comes with mental health issues.
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As a first-gen daughter of Honduran immigrants who themselves suffered colonization and the traumas of a corrupt third-world country, I was told that assimilation to American culture was integral to success. When trying to feel pride for my lineage or claim my heritage, I’ve always felt like I was taking up space that others deserved more, fearing that my interests have looked “white” as a product of assimilation. As I grow and understand the importance of healing through facing the generational trauma that runs deep through my ancestry, I have to believe in my identity regardless of the erasure and assimilation that took place—because the pain exists within my body either way. No matter how I present or behave, my blood is my blood.
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Instagram: @biancavelasquez.tv
Kelly Tapìa-Chuning
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Kelly Tapìa-Chuning (b. 1997) is a mixed-race Chicana artist of Indigenous descent from southern Utah currently based in Detroit, MI. In 2020, she received a BFA in Studio Arts from Southern Utah University; and is pursuing an MFA in Fiber at Cranbrook Academy of Art, where she was awarded a Gilbert Fellowship. Tapìa-Chuning's work has been included in exhibitions with the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, GAVLAK (LA), Onna House (East Hampton), The Border Project Space (NY), and solo exhibitions with Red Arrow Gallery (TN) and Harsh Collective (NYC). Her work has been featured in Artnet News, Southwest Contemporary, Surface Mag, Juxtapose Art & Culture Magazine, Artsin Square, and Friend of The Artist. Tapìa-Chuning's work is in numerous private collections across the US and in public collections at Onna House in East Hampton, NY and the Southern Utah Museum of Art.
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Researching and documenting the history of my ancestors has become a launching point to investigate the displacement/erasure of Indigeneity within US and Mexican culture. Prior to colonization, my maternal ancestors were the Tohono O’odham, who lived without borders across the Sonoran Desert. It is from this place of assimilation and mixture that my work stems from. Focusing on symbols of hybridity, I am examining the power dynamics attached to representation, racial identity, gender, and language.
In post-revolutionary Mexico, the visual representation of mixture in the serape acted as a mechanism that permeated the notion of a homogeneous national identity, erasing Indigeneity within Mexican culture. As an act of decolonization, dismantling the serapes has become a vehicle of honoring my ancestors; to educate and to forge a new visual vocabulary within my hybrid identity.
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When I was young, my Tata would tell me, “Mija, I have Indian blood, and it lives within you.” The story of my ancestors is one of assimilation and erasure. My Tata would speak quietly when he would tell me this. It was in the quietness that held our ancestors' stories. I would ask my Nana about her family from Michoacan, and she would tell me, “Mija, we aren’t Mexican. We are American.”
As a mixed-race person, I have lived my life within the gray. I was too white to be Mexican and too Mexican to be white—neither here nor there. I did not feel comfortable speaking of my experiences. My voice needed to know the past in order to speak of my present.
Though there are many questions left unanswered, that will probably never be answered, I take heart knowing what I do know and these to be my truths. For I have the blood of my ancestors. Through erasure and displacement, I have found them, they are with me, and that can never be taken away. My existence is their resistance.
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Instagram: @kelly_chuning