“My work is motivated by contemporary interpretations of the borderlands,
extensive documentation and research on human rights issues, psychological
theories on the systemic memory hypothesis, as well as personal accounts and oral
history. I look at innovations and experimentations from throughout art history as
guides for structuring my conceptual reality of the corporeal manifestation of
psychological violence and degradation. Together, these investigations and
experiences allow for a comprehensive approach to the production of ideas and
images interpreting the border reality."
extensive documentation and research on human rights issues, psychological
theories on the systemic memory hypothesis, as well as personal accounts and oral
history. I look at innovations and experimentations from throughout art history as
guides for structuring my conceptual reality of the corporeal manifestation of
psychological violence and degradation. Together, these investigations and
experiences allow for a comprehensive approach to the production of ideas and
images interpreting the border reality."
At a relatively early age, Adriana Gallego has created an impressive body of work and a niche for herself as an outspoken, socially
conscious artist. Born in the border town of Nogales, she became acquainted with, in her words, “both the brutal nature of
survival and institutional oppression. I leaned that la línea (the border) is not a passive or static world but rather one that lives in
permanent tension and fragmentation.” Channeling her social concerns into her art, she entered the College of Fine Arts at the
University of Arizona (Tucson) on scholarship and graduated Magna Cum Laude in 1997, simultaneously having apprenticed
with Jane Dickson, Alan Sonfist, and the Alternative Museum in New York. In 1997, she became the youngest first place award
winner of the Ford Foundation’s Siqueiros-Pollock Binational Painting Competition, juried by Jose Luis Cuevas and Luis Jimenez.
Immediately launching a series of solo and group exhibitions, Gallego also became an instructor, teaching art at the University of
Arizona, Theatre of Hearts/Youth First in California, and the Central California Arts Network.
In all of these activities, Gallego maintains, her interest in social issues concerning the border. Exhibiting her paintings on the
subject in 1998, she told a journalist, “The divisions go beyond a simple division of land; they become divisions in the human
spirit and psyche.”
Gallego’s paintings are characterized by a lush application of oils on canvases that she deliberately defaces to represent the scar of
the subjects she portrays. For this artist, texture is a key element in the process of creating. She often employs a fleshy gesso
application and a sanding of layers to arrive at succinct and penetrating works. While working to reframe the border’s politicized
and exploited social identity, Gallego ultimately expresses and unspoken humanity in her haunting images. The body fragmented
is a recurrent theme, suggesting that the regional anxiety is replicated in the psyche of its inhabitants. We find many parts, but
few completed visions of the physical. As the body endures the insurgency of its environment, a struggle to be whole ensues.
The intensity of Gallego’s palette is even more striking when considered against her graceful use of illumination. Enveloped by
the surging color fields, the subjects seem to survive only by the tender fortitude of the artist’s intent. Gallego successfully
documents the reality of a place and people relegated to the fragmentary fancies of politicos and demagogues by carefully
reconstructing the impact of these antagonisms. It is an elaboration that is as timely as it is powerful.
In the painting Liberación: Contradictoria, two hands are entrapped by an aloe vera plant that seems poised for a strangulation.
Produced for Gallego’s Fragmentos de Liberación series, this work presents the contradictory function of a plant that is
traditionally used for medicinal purposes. Considered in this new vein, a painful realization occurs. Nature itself has turned
against the individual in the inverted logic that dominated the imaginary line separating Mexico and the United States. The sanded
surface of this pain confirms the aggression that is endured by an anonymous and ruptured subject. Gallego avoids making a
condemnation by the narrowest of margins. The hands are bound but continue to struggle, abetted by the fortitude of the gesso
application. This conflagration balances at the edge of the canvas, poised to burst its restraints, a portent perhaps of what may
occur if the border malice continues unabated.
Anhelos is an abstract work that employs a precise figuration counterpoint to complete its emotional impact. Violent black
strokes pierce fields of deep blues and corporeal reds. In the left field of this work, a female apparition fixates on the viewer. The
seizures of contrasting colors enclose this elusive figure in a space of militant neutrality. There is a guarded effect produced. An
anonymous longing provokes a desire to achieve recognition, to invade the protective cell. Alas, the viewer is compelled to feel
something in the face of a persistent perplexity. This segregation of emotion and intellect are exemplary of Gallego’s ability to
rescue the emotional truth fro the degeneration of rationalism.
Gallego’s works have been included in dozens of group exhibitions, beginning long before her graduation. Many of these have
been in the Tucson area, among the Sister Sight (Union Gallery, Women’s Resource Center, University of Arizona, 1994), La
Frontera (José Gálvez Photography and Gallery, Tucson, 1996), Missions, Shrines and Holy Places (Tohono Chul Gallery,
Tucson, 1997), and Raices Nuevas: Spaces Revisited (Tucson Pima Arts Council, 1998). Others have been in more widely
scattered locations, including Si Pero: Code Blue Turkey (Universidad de Guanajuato, Guanajuato, Mexico, 1996), the aptly titled
Borders, Barriers and Beaners: Attacking the Myths (Social Public Art Resource Center Venice, CA, 1997), On Site at the Gate
2000 (Angels Gate Cultural Center, San Pedro, CA, 2000), and Quantitative Matter of Strength/Materia Cuantitativa de Voluntad
(Raices Taller 222, Tucson, 2001). She has also mounted several solo exhibitions, including Fragmentos de Liberación (Epic
Café, Tucson, 1999; Espresso Mi Cultura, Los Angeles, 2000), and at this writing is preparing another solo show for Angels
Gate Cultural Center in San Pedro in 2001. In addition, she has received numerous commissions for mural and published works
and has maintained a parallel program of lectures and public speaking engagements. (Joaquín Alvarado)
conscious artist. Born in the border town of Nogales, she became acquainted with, in her words, “both the brutal nature of
survival and institutional oppression. I leaned that la línea (the border) is not a passive or static world but rather one that lives in
permanent tension and fragmentation.” Channeling her social concerns into her art, she entered the College of Fine Arts at the
University of Arizona (Tucson) on scholarship and graduated Magna Cum Laude in 1997, simultaneously having apprenticed
with Jane Dickson, Alan Sonfist, and the Alternative Museum in New York. In 1997, she became the youngest first place award
winner of the Ford Foundation’s Siqueiros-Pollock Binational Painting Competition, juried by Jose Luis Cuevas and Luis Jimenez.
Immediately launching a series of solo and group exhibitions, Gallego also became an instructor, teaching art at the University of
Arizona, Theatre of Hearts/Youth First in California, and the Central California Arts Network.
In all of these activities, Gallego maintains, her interest in social issues concerning the border. Exhibiting her paintings on the
subject in 1998, she told a journalist, “The divisions go beyond a simple division of land; they become divisions in the human
spirit and psyche.”
Gallego’s paintings are characterized by a lush application of oils on canvases that she deliberately defaces to represent the scar of
the subjects she portrays. For this artist, texture is a key element in the process of creating. She often employs a fleshy gesso
application and a sanding of layers to arrive at succinct and penetrating works. While working to reframe the border’s politicized
and exploited social identity, Gallego ultimately expresses and unspoken humanity in her haunting images. The body fragmented
is a recurrent theme, suggesting that the regional anxiety is replicated in the psyche of its inhabitants. We find many parts, but
few completed visions of the physical. As the body endures the insurgency of its environment, a struggle to be whole ensues.
The intensity of Gallego’s palette is even more striking when considered against her graceful use of illumination. Enveloped by
the surging color fields, the subjects seem to survive only by the tender fortitude of the artist’s intent. Gallego successfully
documents the reality of a place and people relegated to the fragmentary fancies of politicos and demagogues by carefully
reconstructing the impact of these antagonisms. It is an elaboration that is as timely as it is powerful.
In the painting Liberación: Contradictoria, two hands are entrapped by an aloe vera plant that seems poised for a strangulation.
Produced for Gallego’s Fragmentos de Liberación series, this work presents the contradictory function of a plant that is
traditionally used for medicinal purposes. Considered in this new vein, a painful realization occurs. Nature itself has turned
against the individual in the inverted logic that dominated the imaginary line separating Mexico and the United States. The sanded
surface of this pain confirms the aggression that is endured by an anonymous and ruptured subject. Gallego avoids making a
condemnation by the narrowest of margins. The hands are bound but continue to struggle, abetted by the fortitude of the gesso
application. This conflagration balances at the edge of the canvas, poised to burst its restraints, a portent perhaps of what may
occur if the border malice continues unabated.
Anhelos is an abstract work that employs a precise figuration counterpoint to complete its emotional impact. Violent black
strokes pierce fields of deep blues and corporeal reds. In the left field of this work, a female apparition fixates on the viewer. The
seizures of contrasting colors enclose this elusive figure in a space of militant neutrality. There is a guarded effect produced. An
anonymous longing provokes a desire to achieve recognition, to invade the protective cell. Alas, the viewer is compelled to feel
something in the face of a persistent perplexity. This segregation of emotion and intellect are exemplary of Gallego’s ability to
rescue the emotional truth fro the degeneration of rationalism.
Gallego’s works have been included in dozens of group exhibitions, beginning long before her graduation. Many of these have
been in the Tucson area, among the Sister Sight (Union Gallery, Women’s Resource Center, University of Arizona, 1994), La
Frontera (José Gálvez Photography and Gallery, Tucson, 1996), Missions, Shrines and Holy Places (Tohono Chul Gallery,
Tucson, 1997), and Raices Nuevas: Spaces Revisited (Tucson Pima Arts Council, 1998). Others have been in more widely
scattered locations, including Si Pero: Code Blue Turkey (Universidad de Guanajuato, Guanajuato, Mexico, 1996), the aptly titled
Borders, Barriers and Beaners: Attacking the Myths (Social Public Art Resource Center Venice, CA, 1997), On Site at the Gate
2000 (Angels Gate Cultural Center, San Pedro, CA, 2000), and Quantitative Matter of Strength/Materia Cuantitativa de Voluntad
(Raices Taller 222, Tucson, 2001). She has also mounted several solo exhibitions, including Fragmentos de Liberación (Epic
Café, Tucson, 1999; Espresso Mi Cultura, Los Angeles, 2000), and at this writing is preparing another solo show for Angels
Gate Cultural Center in San Pedro in 2001. In addition, she has received numerous commissions for mural and published works
and has maintained a parallel program of lectures and public speaking engagements. (Joaquín Alvarado)
REVIEWS AND COMMENTARIES
“Student work is often derivative, imitating the great masters; Adriana Gallego takes this typical situation and turns it on
its head with her painting ‘Puberty at 20.’ Echoing the Edvard Munch painting of the same name, this work is far from
a copy, presenting an extremely personal perspective which proclaims the painting as her own. Lush, textured oils and
somber colors are used in a series of self-portraits and investigations into abstract concepts of ‘body’ and ‘self’.”
Michael Eilers Arizona Daily Wildcat, 14 September 1995
“Student work is often derivative, imitating the great masters; Adriana Gallego takes this typical situation and turns it on
its head with her painting ‘Puberty at 20.’ Echoing the Edvard Munch painting of the same name, this work is far from
a copy, presenting an extremely personal perspective which proclaims the painting as her own. Lush, textured oils and
somber colors are used in a series of self-portraits and investigations into abstract concepts of ‘body’ and ‘self’.”
Michael Eilers Arizona Daily Wildcat, 14 September 1995
The statements on this page appear in the following art book:
Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Art :Artists, Works, Culture and Education
Bilingual Press, Hispanic Research Center, Arizona State University, 2002.
http://latinoartcommunity.org/community/ChicArt/ArtistDir/AdrGal.html
Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Art :Artists, Works, Culture and Education
Bilingual Press, Hispanic Research Center, Arizona State University, 2002.
http://latinoartcommunity.org/community/ChicArt/ArtistDir/AdrGal.html