Maria Cristina Tavera: Homeward Bound November 8 - December 3, 2021

Artist's Talk

Tuesday, November 16, 5:30pm

About The Exhibition

Minneapolis-based artist, Maria Cristina Tavera ("Tina") examines cultural signifiers regarding constructions of race, ethnicity, gender, and national and cultural identities. Tavera appropriates visual imagery from Latin American legends, commercial packaging, the media, politics, comics, maps, currency, graffiti, and games. Working in various media (printmaking, installation, video), she plays with bilingual shifts in meaning to create art that is often humorous and yet simultaneously confronts the dark legacy and pervasive effects of colonialism and racism in the Americas. Maria Cristina Tavera is a dual citizenship with Mexico and the United States. She holds a Master of Leadership in the Arts from the Humphrey School and a BA in Spanish and BA in Latin American Studies from the University of Minnesota. Tavera has exhibited nationally and internationally and has received fellowships and grants: McKnight Visual Artist Fellowship, Archibald Bush Leadership Fellowship, Shannon Leadership Institute, Smithsonian Latino Museum Studies program, Museum of Modern Art-New York, Forecast Public Art, Minnesota State Arts Board, Metropolitan Regional Arts Council (MRAC), and Institute of Mexicans Abroad (IME). As an independent curator, she prepared the international exhibition Sus Voces: Women Printmakers in Mexico at Highpoint Center for Printmaking, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and was co-curator for American Art its Complicated at the Minnesota Museum of American Art ("M"). Her writings have been published by the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, as well as a book titled, Mexican Pulp Art.