'Saludos Amigos' exhibition featured at Carson City Courthouse Gallery

The Capital City Arts Initiative presents its exhibition, "Saludos Amigos" by artist Justin Favela at the CCAI Courthouse Gallery. The exhibition is in the gallery now through Jan. 29, 2020, at the Courthouse, 885 E Musser Street, Carson City. The exhibition is free and the public is cordially invited. The second-floor gallery is open Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

In his exhibition, "Saludos Amigos", Favela collaged imagery from famous animated films that depict Latin American culture. Using his signature "piñata style", he made large scale murals with tissue paper and glue that break down images from films like “The Three Caballeros”, “The Emperor's New Groove” and “Coco”. These films celebrate Latin American culture but through the investigation of the imagery, Favela has highlighted the exoticism and Hollywood fantasy that falsely represents an entire culture.

Favela makes work in a piñata style exploring his identity as a Latino from Las Vegas with Mexican and Guatemalan parents. He makes his art with traditional craft materials, like tissue paper and cardboard, making anything from sculptures to large scale paper installations. A lot of his work is labor intensive and benefits from assistance and creative input from community members who help build and conceptualize his projects.

Previously, Favela has worked with school groups to seniors to develop some of his larger scale installations. To assist Favela with this project’s construction, CCAI will coordinate with Western Nevada College’s Latino Cohort for its students to serve as interns and work with Favela to create the work and learn his decision-making processes. Favela said, “Sometimes, When I do an install I will get community input. For example, when I made the last lowrider at Museo de Las Americas in Denver I had the teens help me pick out the colors and the imagery for the car.”
Justin Favela, a Las Vegas, NV, native, works in painting, sculpture, and performance. His work draws on art history, popular culture, and his Guatemalan/Mexican heritage. He has earned a BFA degree in Studio Arts, UNLV, 2010 and has participated in exhibitions across the US and the UK. Las Vegas venues include the Contemporary Arts Center, Trifecta Gallery, and the Clark County Government Center. Recent exhibitions include “Unsettled”, Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV; “Mi Tierra: Contemporary Artists Explore Place”; site-specific installations by 13 Latino artists that express experiences of contemporary life in the American West, Denver Art Museum; and the group exhibition “Shonky: The Aesthetics of Awkwardness” touring the United Kingdom through 2018; and “State of the Art: Discovering American Art Now”, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR. When not in the studio, Favela is probably watching tv or co-hosting his podcast “Latinos Who Lunch”.

Favela gave talks about his art practice to Carson, Dayton, and Douglas high school art students and faculty in late September.

Essay writer, Emmanuel Ortega, is a curator, podcaster, and visiting professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Ortega has lectured nationally and internationally on images of autos-de-fé and nineteenth-century Mexican landscapes. He contributed the chapter “Hagiographical Misery and the Liminal Witness: Novohispanic Franciscan Martyr Portraits and the Politics of Imperial Expansion” to the edited volume Visualizing Sensuous Suffering and Affective Pain in Early Modern Europe and the Spanish Americas (Brill, 2018). Also, an essay titled "Spanish Colonial Art History and the Work of Empire," was published this summer by the UCLA's Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture journal.

This exhibition is supported by a Challenge America grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The artist and CCAI thank the NEA for its generous support of this project.

The Capital City Arts Initiative is an artist-centered organization committed to the encouragement and support of artists and the arts and culture of Carson City and the surrounding region. The Initiative is committed to community building for the area through art projects and exhibitions, live events, arts education programs, artist residencies, and online projects.

The Capital City Arts Initiative is also funded by the John and Grace Nauman Foundation, Carson City Cultural Commission, Nevada Arts Council, Nevada Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities, NV Energy Foundation, Southwest Gas Corporation Foundation, U.S. Bank Foundation, and its members.

Visit CCAI’s website at www.ccainv.org for more information.