Watch the recap of the Laredo segment of MIRAAA Media Fest held on February 24, 2024 in Laredo, Texas. MIRAAA highlighted the work of 28 filmmakers from the Texas-Mexico border and across the world, alongside 5 commissioned new works by artists in Laredo and the Rio Grande Valley.

Learn more at MIRAAA Media Fest
Thank you to RR Cinematic for this beautiful recap!

Pictured above from L-R: Lizett Montiel (Rizu X), Maritza Bautista, Josue Ramírez, C Diaz, Andres Sanchez, Andrea Ortiz, and Norma Ortiz.

Photo by Louis San Miguel.

Border Is A Weapon
Special | 26m 45s
Video has Closed Captions
CC

Border Is A Weapon
06/11/2024

How to Watch Community Connect
Stream on PBS.org

Daphne Art Foundation artists, local advocates, and community leaders and residents recognize the impact that cultural opportunities and programming can have on the quality of life and local economy in Laredo, Texas.

Video produced by Daphne Art Foundation
Video created by Carolina Cruz
Laredo, Texas
2023

CTRL+X: Composed/desCompuestos
Curated by Maritza Bautista
Arts Fort Worth, March-April 2023

Curator Statement
Mi nombre es Maritza Bautista and I am the curator of CTRL+X: composed / desCompuestos an exhibition featuring the artists Gil Rocha from Laredo and Cande Aguilar desde Brownsville; somos Fronterizos.

CTRL+X: composed / desCompuestos is on view in the Marlene & Spencer Hays Foundation Gallery at Arts Fort Worth, located at 1300 Gendy Street in Fort Worth, Texas.

CTRL+X is the keyboard shortcut for “cut.” Aquí representa una estética rasquache, a DIY aesthetic of cutting, or taking from ordinary, everyday cultural objects, materials, visuals, ideas, customs and social behaviors that are rooted in the U.S.-Mexico border region in south Texas.

Rasquachismo is a lifestyle.
Rasquachismo es una forma de vivir, o revivir lo descompuesto. It is composed of taking a little from here and more from there to become something else. Refinado. Refined as a rasquache way to examine our humanness — a form of archeology into the leftover or residue of our current existence as border people.

The exhibition includes 29 works composed of mixed media paintings, assemblage, and video work.

With a stock pile of found objects, Gil Rocha repurposes the work in ways that make the viewer curious. Close observation reveals a dark side - a juxtaposition of clever composition with Frontera socio-political-and economic undertones. “Se trata de cosas que nunca sanan y dejan huellas por fuera y por dentro” (Rocha). It appears that something is pending or waiting to become a piece of something else. Like people who leave traces and crumbs in other people’s lives. Like us, Rocha’s work doesn’t always speak its truth even when it’s explicit. One can examine the triumph and downfalls. Despite the damage, the work conveys hope. La esperanza.

Cande Aguilar works similarly by taking mainstream imagery and combining it with elements from his local, visual sphere. He integrates the pedazos he cuts directly into his paintings. He transfers appropriated imagery from handmade signs, pop culture, and scribbles from his children’s drawings to create bold statements as homage representative of the push and pull culture on the border —representa sentimientos sentidos, y el caos con cada linea en su obra. The viewer is confronted with his BarrioPOP aesthetic which allows him to follow a tradition that Fronterizos share of making things. He uses fragments that represent la Frontera but can be identified in a larger spectrum.

Los dos, Rocha and Aguilar, compose in ways that feel improvised, implying an almost uncomposed (or descompuesto) resolution. However the artwork communicates stark contradictions that are mature and transposed between each of the pieces and the essence of the artists themselves resonates.

To a new viewer, the works may appear to be interchangeable between Rocha and Aguilar. They use similar techniques and color palettes. Together, their work creates a cohesive harmony and easily opens up unexpected conversations upon close inspection of the way they use materials, scavenged and repurposed objects, nostalgia, and their play on words.

CTRL+X: composed/ desCompuestos will be on view at Arts Fort Worth until April 29, 2023.

Maritza Bautista
April 2023

This artist talk and gallery tour was recorded at the opening reception of The Border is a Weapon at Punto de Contacto/Point of Contact Gallery in Syracuse, New York.

This talk included curator Gil Rocha, artists Maritza Bautista, Angel Cabrales, and Juan de Dios Mora, and Leah Patgorski of the Other Border Wall Project.

Some artists take their inspiration from our culture and city streets, some have achieved new heights in their artistic practice through programs like Cultivarte Laredo, and others—the younger and emerging—are inspired to transform the ideas they encounter into something larger; talents yet to be experienced.

Laredo artists, advocates, and community leaders recognize the impact that cultural opportunities and resources can have on our quality of life and local economy. Alexa Hernandez, Mauro Martinez, Juan De Dios Mora, Krista Quintanilla, and Gil Rocha give us insight into their journeys as artists.

Join the enthusiasts and patrons who are fueling the artists and creatives who continue to create, inspire, and transform Laredo.

Produced by Daphne Art Foundation, a nonprofit arts organization with a mission to advance the visual, performing and media arts in the Laredo border region by: providing residencies to artists and creatives, exhibiting and promoting artists, and cultivating arts appreciation and participation. www.daphneart.org

Video created by Marco Gonzalez
Laredo, Texas
2022

"El Tren" (The Train) is a text I wrote for a performance I presented at the Kirk Hopper Fine Art Gallery, curated by Susie Kalil (Dallas, Texas).

Here it is presented with sound compiled from field recordings of the train, sounds in downtown Laredo, and visuals of the train. This is the Spanish only version.

EL TREN

El tren pasa por aquí.
No deja dormir.

A la distancia suena como
serenata
de las que no son para ti
pero te abraza la melodía
y te avisa qué hay por venir.

El tren guarda tantas cosas.
Con su movimiento
nos avisa que el mundo se mueve;

y nosotros nos dejamos de ver.

Hay que reconocer
tantas cosas
desalmadas y también agradables
para sentir sin los ojos y mirar
con otros sentidos;

Pedir
para llenar y dar
para gozar.

Reconocer un destino de ser pobre
con cosas nuevas,
reconstruidas con la mirada y pegadas
porque,
¿por qué no?

Yo siempre pienso y a su tiempo
apropiado digo dos cosas:
"el viento me lleva como semilla" y
"la raíz guarda la vida de la historia".

Tantas cosas
se pierden
y ahí duermen debajo del tren.
Y todo guarda su historia.

Guarda tantas cosas.

Así mismo tú y yo
llevamos en las venas esa vida
guardada y protegida
por la tierra.

Tierra sana
Tierra amarga
Tierra granosa
Tierra suave
Tierra que guarda
Tierra sagrada

Sagrado es el aire que
con el podemos llenar
los pulmones y darle
a todo la naturaleza un poquito
con que vivir.
Y en cambio nos entrega el viento;
y nos lleva y a veces nos deja.

Tierra
Tierra luz
Tierra lumbre
Tierra agua --
Agua como la que corre como un río
Bravo y lleno de coraje
espanta y a la misma ves calma
el coraje del pueblo.

Agua con tierra,
Tierra con agua;
Las dos abrazadas,
inseparables
como lo vivido atrapa.

Hoy es día para escuchar,
día para platicar
de tantas cosas pérdidas
y de hallar
y también cantar.

Cómo el tren que se mueve
con la fuerza de un río,
a veces suave con ritmo,
a veces feroz y fuerte--
No se para por nadie y
con su sonido carga
los llantos de los perdidos
atrapados
por un sueño no vivido

Y así se acaba este cuento.
Sin números,
sin nombres,
sin un lugar fijo;
Pero con solo un destino
y así se acaba el tren.

Con cada carro que cuento,
cada color,
cada espacio,
se lo lleva el viento.

Que llegue el tren
con todo lo que carga
y con la manera que nos calla.
Ese silencio en la cabeza
por fin descansa.

El tren pasa por aquí.
El tren pasa por mi.

12.15.21

Copyright 2022 Maritza Bautista

Compra y Venta (without LED sign)

I live in Laredo. I like to think that my Casas de Cambio (photo and video) series are about people even though the bodies aren't always present. I approach this topic (money exchange) as it informs and inspires my creative process.

Casas de Cambio remind me of my childhood and traveling to the border with my family every year, sometimes once per month or more. I would listen to my parents talk about exchanging dollars for pesos before crossing the bridge into Mexico, or debating whether to exchange the dollars in el otro lado (the other side).

One of the things that really motivates me when I see a Casa de Cambio is the thought of wealth--money--and how it moves along and across the U.S./Mexico border.

Growing up, and even today, a statement that is common to hear people say is "se mueve" (it/they/he/she moves) and is usually in a context related to smuggling -- drugs, weapons, people, money, illicit goods in general, etc. "Se mueve" or "se mueven," in plural, is heard when people encounter how others live or what vehicles they drive -- luxuries that seem out of place within the context of their respective class status.

I'm also deeply interested in the weight of the peso, as currency or as a play on the word 'weight' itself. "Peso" in English translates to weight. And I often think of the peso representing the weight of the people, stuck in poverty. Poverty often times leads to horizontal power relations, violence among the same folks. With poverty, there could be violence--with two different outcomes; in a revolutionary form or in the sadistic form it has taken and that we often see or hear about living on the border.

The way poverty traps people in bad situations creates a horizontal violence, directed at each other. My Compra y Venta piece is about this...

Instagram | @maritza_la_b
Copyright 2021 Maritza Bautista

Pushing Cartón, 2020
dir. Maritza Bautista
2:19

Chole, the cardboard scavenger in the experimental short, crosses the U.S./Mexico border every day with her husband and daughter. They work collecting cardboard from sidewalks in the downtown area in Laredo, Texas. At the end of their shift, they cross back to Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico where they live and sell the cardboard they scavenged at the local cardboard recycling center.

Copyright 2020 Maritza Bautista

"Casas de Cambio" is a text I wrote. Here it is presented as an audio piece accompanied by a :31 second video looped 3 times to create this 1:41 second audio/visual piece part of my ongoing "Casas de Cambio" series. The series includes photos of money exchange locations in Laredo, Texas.

This piece was intended to be an audio/visual installation. The video is to be projected on a wall accompanied by photos from my Casas de Cambio series with a separate audio component on headphones.

Casas de Cambio
by maritza bautista

Hay muchas casas
de Cambio,
sin cuenta.

Pero debajo del agua
nada.

Mucho pez.

Regatea el valor de un dollar, al mil,
para llenar
el bolsillo forrado en plata,
pero es gris.

Gusanos se arrastran
sin saber
su deber.

Súbete ala casa más
alta
antes de caer.

“El sol no se puede tapar con un dedo,”
decía mi abuela,
mi abuelo;
Pero
para chingar a un pueblo,
no se gasta
ni sientes el peso.

Mientras los niños juegan,
[tierra,
risas,
golpes,
llantos]
intercambian, entre ellos,
monedas
contaminadas.

Te están checando.

Cámbiame diez,
cuarenta,
cien,
cincuenta.

Cuenta
cada pez.

Aunque te aprovechas
para gastar
ese peso
otra vez.

Copyright 2019 Maritza Bautista