MinerAlert
MinerAlert
In Proving the Hypothesis of Celestial Flirtation, El Paso-based artist Christin Apodaca takes us behind the scenes into her daily life and working practices, offering insight into her creative process. As scholar Angélica Becerra, PhD, writes, Apodaca’s “inclusion of both work and the material culture that surrounds her life as a working artist is a movida or ‘revolutionary maneuver,’ that shifts our attention to the body at work.” Citing Gloria Anzaldúa, Becerra connects Apodaca’s mural-making to the historical precedents of Chicana muralists Barbara Carrasco and Judith Baca.
The exhibition takes its title from the 2023 Wes Anderson film Asteroid City, in which a retro-futuristic version of a fictional desert town in the mid-1950s serves as the site for a Junior Stargazer convention. The movie is a metatext for the creative process: in it, Anderson stages a play within a recording of the same play. In Apodaca’s exhibition, we see the staging of her painting work, presented within an exhibition format that includes finished murals, unrealized projects, rejection letters, her studio clothing, her ceramic planters, and a replica of her home studio wall, filled with drawings, collage, and paintings. Rather than centering the final work, the exhibition welcomes work-in-process as an integral part of artistic research and exploration. Even rejection, Apodaca notes, has much to teach us.
Born and raised in El Paso, Apodaca attended UTEP and the University of New Mexico, where she completed a degree in painting. She lives in El Paso, where she maintains an active career as a muralist and exhibiting artist.
Supported by a generous Mellon Foundation grant, this exhibition is part of the Genius Loci series, in which we look at the ways our local context informs artists’ practices. Proving the Hypothesis of Celestial Flirtation is curated by Rubin Center Curator, Laura Augusta, PhD.
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