The struggle to define what it means to be Mexican in an era of rapid change and instability profoundly affected Mexican art in the twentieth century. Drawn from the Bell Gallery collection—and including works by Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Graciela Iturbide, Salvador Lutteroth, Alfredo Ramos Martinez, Leopoldo Méndez, Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros, Mariana Yampolsky, and Francisco Zúñiga—the exhibition raises questions about who is allowed, capable, or obligated to create culture. Who has the right to speak for Mexico?

Curated by Rica Maestas
Image: Graciela Iturbide, Mujer Ángel (Angel Woman), 1979. Gelatin silver print.

Considered to be one of the artist’s most important bodies of work, Carrie Mae Weems’ Kitchen Table Series interweaves themes of race, class, gender, friendship, love, loss, power, and motherhood. The intimate and often political content of these images finds common ground around the kitchen table, transcending the separation of domestic and civic space. First exhibited in 1990, the Kitchen Table Series set the stage for future contemporary artists to explore issues of identity.

Curated by Jo-Ann Conklin with Rica Maestas
Image: Carrie Mae Weems, Untitled from the Kitchen Table Series, 1990. Gelatin silver print.

Thread on plywood, smoke and foliage, cast pigment on drywall, nail polish on slip-cast porcelain, and electroplated grapevines. Kim Faler’s art is an alchemy of everyday things, cultivating empathy for our ability to apprehend and appreciate beauty in the fleeting moments of life. Through sculpture, installation, photography, and drawing, she makes the mundane mysterious and the common uncanny.

Curated by Ian Alden Russell
Image: Kim Faler, Detail of Sonder, 2016. Electroplated grapevines (copper, chrome, gold), latex paint, epoxy and steel. Originally commissioned and produced by Artpace, San Antonio.

A series of x-rays. Bright white spots record exposure of the film to pieces of trinitite by Gabriel Martinez. Named after “Trinity” — the site of the first atomic weapon detonation in 1945 near Alamogordo, New Mexico — trinitite is created when an atomic bomb explodes over gypsum sands, fusing the granules into a radioactive glass. Gabriel Martinez’s grandmother collected the trinitite after the blast.

Curated by Ian Alden Russell
Image: Gabriel Martinez, Jar of Trinitite (Taster's Choice/Proving Ground), 2015. Digital print. Courtesy of the artist. Originally commissioned and produced by Artpace, San Antonio.

For more than a decade Chris Jordan has focused his and our attention on the consequences of mass consumerism—photographing mountains of discarded electronics in landfills and, more recently, the decomposing carcasses of Laysan albatross that have died from ingesting plastic. The latter images, included here, are difficult and important. Translating unimaginable statistics — 299 million tons of plastics produced a year; 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic debris in the ocean; a million sea birds and 100,000 marine mammals killed annually from plastic in our oceans — into intimate images of life and death, Jordan confronts us with the consequences of our lifestyle and calls on us to take action toward change.

Curated by Jo-Ann Conklin
Image:  Chris Jordan, Untitled from Midway