Image Credits: Courtesy of the artist.

Main Gallery

¡Pa’delante Mestizaje!

Artist

Wendi Ruth

Curated by:

Sally Frater

Exhibition Dates:

January 6, 2016

- February 18, 2016

Opening Reception:

January 15, 2016 7:00 pm

Wendi Ruth’s print-based practice touches on issues of nostalgia, family, geography, and cultural identity. In her most recent body of work ¡Pa’delante Mestizaje!, the artist explores her own hybridized identity as a U.S. citizen whose family originates from Mexico. Recalling her upbringing in a bilingual household, Ruth has created stylized reproductions of objects that were housed in the homes of her parents and grandparents, as well as the landscape and flora of Texas and Mexico, to explore the various forms of cultural mixing that have led to the liminal space where her identity is located. Employing tropes of domestic realm, language, and the environment Ruth’s work communicates that identity is never reductive, singular, “pure”, or final but is instead a continually evolving amalgamation of cultural practices and actions.

Artist Biography:

Wendi Ruth is a recent graduate of Wichita State University’s School of Art, Design, and Creative Industries. Wendi Ruth holds an MFA in Studio Art, Printmaking and a BA in Studio Art, Printmaking from the University of Texas, Dallas. She has shown her work in numerous group exhibitions at venues throughout Kansas, Texas, and Kentucky.

Find more of her work online at wendivalladares.com.

Curator Biography:

Sally Frater holds an Honours BA in Studio Art from the University of Guelph and an MA in Contemporary Art from The University of Manchester/Sotheby’s Institute of Art. Curatorially, she is interested in decolonization, space and place, Black and Caribbean diasporas, photography, art of the everyday, and issues of equity and representation in museological spaces. She is the curator of contemporary art at the Art Gallery of Guelph and is the co-director of Artistic Programs at Emerging Curators Institute.