ABOUT |
Statement
My paintings are ever reframing my testimonies as a Chicana in search of grieving and growth. Always concerned with the U.S./Mexico border as I grew up in El Paso, Texas, my understanding of regional complexity is always in orbit. When I paint, I am reevaluating the many nuances and fantasies others have of the desert, of Mexico, of the United States, and of the border. I cope with these ideas through ironic critiques, reappropriating power through the fine arts. I am at the same time finding a balance of decentering the institutions and academia through a consistent public art presence. I am learning the differences between political art and activist art, and I am on a journey of doing so without losing my sanity. There is so much to be angry about, so I am in a constant challenge within myself to decenter whiteness to channel energy into empowerment of my communities. Community too is a challenge because I am living between the states of Texas, New Mexico, and Chihuahua. There is so much to cover through figuration that leads to the erasure of those I decide not to preserve. I am in a position of privilege because I am creating histories that are going to outlive me. What keeps me going is knowing that I am helping voice the silences of history through my form of documentation. I think about my site-specific presence as a maker, exhibitor, and institutional participant on top of my brownness through themes of politics of representation, tokenization, and erasure. Unlike my ancestors, I am a brown woman able to tell my brown stories as a primary source. This is where I can tell the difference between the fantasies others have of the lives I live and places I belong to versus what we experience firsthand. I can point that the rise in media in my generation has led to documented exposure but also the dangerous bending of truths. I paint about these takes but sometimes, I find certain fantasies to be of my own emergence. The land I belong to is to be respected for its history and then critically maintained through decolonizing, grieving, and healing. Trying to take care of the people I paint knowing the artistic agency my work does and does not have, I am to uncover ways in which my communities and I can live with, against, and past the border.
Bio
Citlali Delgado is a Chicana visual artist from El Paso, Texas with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from New Mexico State University. Based in the borderlands, her paintings function to understand how she and her communities can live with, against, and past the border. She works to channel representation into community visibility to funnel grief to spark growth in spaces of Latino and female multiplicity. She attended the Yale Norfolk School of Art residency program and has work in the Eastern New Mexico University and the New Mexico State University Museum permanent collections. She has exhibited at the El Paso Museum of Art Border Biennial, Museo de Arte de Ciudad Juárez Bienal Fronteriza, and the Ecos del Sol exhibition at the Museum of the Big Bend.