2022
Developing a Visual Language of the South Texas Landscape
Centro de Artes
Jenelle Esparza has a profound connection with nature within the South Texas landscape that she accredits to the women in her family. A native of Corpus Christi, Esparza recalls visiting the beaches, jetties, and waterfronts near Shoreline Blvd. and weekend trips to her grandparent’s ranch in the tiny town of Premont, TX. It was here the matriarch of the family, Idolina Olivarez, Esparza’s grandmother, told stories of her childhood days working in the cotton fields of South Texas long before the fiber became a staple of Esparza’s studio practice.
Esparza began her professional career as an artist shortly after graduating from the University of Texas at San Antonio with a concentration in photography. A part-time job in a digital print studio allowed her to create monumental photographs, shot primarily in black and white on a large format film camera, while still a student at UTSA.
Her first solo exhibition, As They Were (2012), showcased photos inspired by Mesoamerican imagery and the compositions of artists like Cuba’s María Magdalena Campos-Pons and German-born American Kiki Smith. Thematically, she focused on introspection and the human form paired with found and antique objects—including turkey feathers and a cast iron radiator. Soon after, Esparza found herself out of school and no longer working at the print studio. A dramatic shift in her work quickly developed when the resources provided by the university and her workplace were no longer available. It would begin a journey of exploring new materials and methods as a source of inspiration to tell her own story as well as the narratives of her ancestors.
While continuing to grow and develop her artistic voice, she introduced other interests into her work. These included palmistry, concepts exploring nature and the human connection, as well as elements of the human form and patterns found outdoors. Esparza’s first large-scale city public art project, Us and Them (2012), featured 62 handprints from notable San Antonio community members intermingled with various printed native leaves.
In 2016, Esparza was awarded her first significant grant by the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture. With the support of this award, she explored her family’s interconnected history with South Texas labor by revisiting her grandmother’s stories of cotton fields. The financial backing provided by NALAC allowed Esparza to enroll in metalworking courses and learn the process of bronze casting. The result was a multi-media exhibition that included found objects, a mural-sized photo memorializing the cotton fields in Banquete, TX, and delicately cast bronze cotton spurs displayed within an infinity mirror box, creating the illusion of endless cotton rows. Her El Color de la Obra (2016) exhibition would begin a series of installations, including Yo Solita Me Enseñé (2017) and LUCRE (2017), that revolved around South Texas laborers, violence, exploitation, and cotton’s role in the collective story of the United States.
In what would prove to be a breakthrough moment for Esparza, in 2018 historian and curator Jeffreen M. Hayes, Ph.D. chose Esparza as an Artpace International Artist-in-Residence from the Texas open call. Esparza accepted the opportunity and again challenged herself to learn a new skill and medium, shifting her focus to natural fibers and the art of weaving. Esparza immediately got to work, enrolling in classes and purchasing a used loom. She worked eight-hour days for the entirety of the two-month residency. Her efforts produced five large-scale handwoven tapestries, her first ever. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art would include Dancer in an Unconscious Rhythm III-IV (2018) tapestries in State of the Art 2020, which later traveled to DePaul University (2019) and Louisiana State University (2022). Esparza explained that the work “expresses the connection between the body and the cotton fields, with each piece representing the physical toll of labor on the body and spirit to reveal its stress, strain, and strength.” Gathering Bones (2018) represented Esparza’s heritage, cultural rootedness, and shared link to the lesser-known histories of Tejanos in the cotton fields.
Esparza has cultivated a vocabulary using the combination of cotton fiber, vintage tools, and found objects to unravel Texas mythologies and reveal looted lands. Her latest solo exhibitions, Old Souls (2021) and It Could Only Be Lived (2022), display her proficiency in utilizing her abstracted textiles and family heirlooms to serve as a vehicle for unearthing histories and memories of an area with a tumultuous past.