Welcome listeners to 5 Questions: A Critical Mass for the Visual Arts Podcast in which we ask 5 questions of our interviewees aimed at positioning and contextualizingtheir respective bodies of work within the St. Louis artworld. This episode, we’re talking with José Garza.
José Guadalupe Garza was born along the US/Mexico border. He is a conceptual artist, educator, and military veteran working across various mediums. His practice examines how Latinx histories are continually constructed and reconstructed in American popular culture. Garza borrows from films, music, literary works, and the science fiction genre to create reimagined narratives that include appropriated images, recorded music, reenactments, experimental photography, improvisation, ad hoc libraries, presentations, curated screenings and exhibitions, and ready-made objects.
Garza has exhibited and screened works widely throughout the United States and abroad. In 2019, he participated with frequent collaborator Miríam Ruiz in Counterpublic , an expansive triennial public art platform scaled to the Cherokee Street neighborhood in St. Louis. Upcoming exhibitions and screenings include, Border Control: Traversing Horizons in Media Practice at Stamps Gallery at the University of Michigan and From the Archives: Video in America at the Everson Museum in Syracuse, NY.
Currently, he is a Museum Educator at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, is an adjunct professor at St. Charles Community College and University of Missouri St. Louis, serves on the boards of Bread and Roses Missouri, Latinx Arts Network, and Paul ArtSpace, is a Caretaker (Studio + Install) at The Luminary, and is a founding member of Monaco and the Latinx Film Festival in St. Louis.
5 Questions is a program by Critical Mass for the Visual Arts – a nonprofit, self-formed visual arts collaborative dedicated to promoting, enhancing and initiating contemporary visual art in the St. Louis region.
Pick it up on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts
Or at criticalmassart.org/fivequestions, on twitter @criticalmassSTL
With José Garza and Joe Kohlburn
Editor – Sarah Hammond
Producer – Brett Williams
Critical Mass for the Visual Arts 