Thank you to @keratxarts for capturing my process and interviewing me about my work earlier this year. From following me around to the skatepark where I delved deeper into my photographic practice to filming the installation of my thesis exhibition as I culminated my MFA studies at TCU. I want to thank @camilodiazjr and @christian.i.vasquez for asking me to be a part of this lovely series and crafting such a beautifully filmed story. I can truly say that pursuing my artwork ever since I conceived that I could be an artist has whole heartedly paid off. I’m forever thankful. 🙏🏽 See the full documentary in my bio.
Roots in our memory at @presahousegallery
Thanks @8190luna and @jenelle.esparza for believing in this work and to be sharing dialogue with @chormicle 👏🏽👏🏽 Shout out to @glasstire for Top 5 Art Exhibits. I’m excited about the next chapter of my work and continuing to expand on my practice.
Join us Saturday, April 11 for Material Matter: a conversation exploring the evolution of materiality, identity, and regional influence in contemporary art in Texas. Moderated by artist and educator, Raul Rodriguez (TCU MFA ’25), this talk traces the lineage of the 1996 exhibition curated by the late Dr. Fran Colpitt, "Synthesis and Subversion: A Latino Direction in San Antonio Art." Thirty years later, "Synthesis & Subversion Redux" re-examines that foundation through a contemporary lens. The discussion, featuring panelists Fernando Alvarez, Jenelle Esparza, and Michelle Cortez Gonzales, will delve into the tactile specifics of material choice, exploring how each artist translates material into a nuanced language of resilience and heritage.
📍 Fort Worth Contemporary Arts, 3050 Waits Avenue, Fort Worth, TX
🕰 Saturday, April 11 at 2 pm
🎟 Free and open to all, no RSVP required
About the panelists:
Fernando Alvarez (TCU MFA '22) is a Fort Worth-based artist and co-founder of Easyside. Alvarez had the privilege of studying under Dr. Fran Colpitt, while contributing to the scholarship surrounding her legacy and notably writing for the catalogue of "Do you really believe that?," an exhibition honoring her curatorial vision. As an artist his concept driven work uses industrial materials to explore the artists’ displacement from his home country of Honduras.
Jenelle Esparza is a San Antonio-based artist who uses cotton and found objects to explore the legacies of agricultural labor and resilience in South Texas, moving from documentary photography to a deeply conceptual, material-based practice. Her recent projects utilize textiles and found objects to explore the parallels between landscape and bodily experiences, and the implications of generational trauma.
Michelle Cortez Gonzales is a Texas interdisciplinary artist working across painting, collage, textile, and installation. She engages material as a site for care, protection, and cultural continuity, drawing on domestic processes to navigate intergenerational narratives shaped by assimilation.
Photo of Jenelle Esparza by Bria Woods
Tracing Bracero Legacies 2023
Laser etched fabrics, inkjet prints, single channel audio (6:12)
In this iteration of the project Tracing Bracero Legacies, I revisited my installation of the overlooked histories of the Bracero Program (1942–1964), a labor agreement that contracted over four million Mexican nationals to work in the United States. In scope, I drew from archival imagery and historical accounts online. I etched images onto fabric and situated them among my photographs of living Braceros and various mementos, creating tactile and visual connections between past and present. When I visited Braceros, I conducted oral histories as a relational practice rather than as isolated testimonies. The stories are not presented as singular accounts but as interconnected experiences, highlighting the collective endurance within systems of labor and migration. At @presahousegallery , I wanted the audience to experience these histories as one, understanding them not as distant accounts but as part of a shared social fabric. The bracero history is my history. Intergenerational.
After starting this project I came to discover my great grandfather was a bracero. My granma had kept his ID card from 1954. It was a full circle moment.
Roots in our Memory
Raul Rodriguez
Presa House Gallery
March 7 - April 18, 2026
Roots of Amnesia is a collection of photographs taken between 2023-2025 that interrogate the effects of the colonial histories that are rooted in a region positioned between two countries, Texas. Its history is shaped by centuries of migration, trade, and politics - blending Indigenous, Mexican, Tejano, and immigrant narratives together. “Amnesia,” refers to the intentional and unintentional forgetting of historic events. This forgetting can occur collectively or individually due to the process of systemic erasure that prioritizes certain histories while silencing others. I traveled West and South in search of messages from the land, never really knowing what I was looking for but feeling like there was something to be told. The work grapples with these memories that do not unfold in sequence but surface unevenly, in fragments and returns. Meaning emerges not through chronology, but through proximity. We are the roots that carry these histories onward both painfully and with grace.
Read my whole thesis in my bio. https://repository.tcu.edu/items/ef1cd313-c289-4925-8e2b-eee324c5d9b0
Our latest project is available now. Link in bio!
Raul Rodriguez’s short volume thesis photo book, Roots of Amnesia, explores memory through image-making and reflection. Based upon Texas history, the visual language of his photographs draws on a nonlinear understanding of time and events, the presence of symbols embedded in landscape, and the endurance of memory through acts of daily practice. Raul brings to light the hidden stories of Texas such as the Porvenir Massacre, La Merced cemetery, the TX/MX borderwall and the remnants of such events on communities and places across Texas. Using this framework, Rodriguez considers memory not as a static archive, but as a living process shaped by symbols, histories, and survival. A contributing poem by writer, Christopher Carmona, is included in the book.
8.5”x11” Letter
Matte Finish
Full Color
28 pg.
Work for @rotaryinternational covering the Richard L. Knight Minority Business Award in Fort Worth, TX. Previous selection judges and small business awardees. Chris Jordan, Carlo Capua, Katrina Carpenter (Carpenters Catering), Jeff Postell (Post-L Construction), and Rosa Maria Berdeja (Berdeja Law)
Thanks for the call @leannarthur
Reception for Raul Rodriguez MFA thesis exhibition Roots of Amnesia is tomorrow, Tuesday March 11 from 6-8pm.
Roots of Amnesia examines the resilience of cultural memory in a region shaped by migration, contested identities, and the ongoing procedure of colonial override. Rodriguez explores how cultural presence persists despite hegemonic narratives by using photographic portraiture, landscapes, and asynchronous events to blur the lines between memory, documentation, and history.
Roots of Amnesia
Moudy Gallery
March 10-15, 2025
My MFA thesis, Roots of Amnesia, will take place March 10-15 at @tcuartgalleries with a reception Tuesday March 11, from 6-8pm. Hope to see you there!
Roots of Amnesia examines the resilience of cultural memory in a region shaped by migration, contested identities, and the ongoing procedure of colonial override. Through photography, I explore how cultural presence persists despite hegemonic narratives, using portraiture, landscapes, and asynchronous events to blur the lines between memory, documentation, and history.
“After a young woman was shot dead in Texas, a medical school harvested her body parts”
Aurimar Iturriago Villegas left Venezuela hoping to lift her family out of poverty. When she was murdered, her corpse became a commodity in the U.S. body trade.
Link in bio.
Photography by Alejandro Bonilla and @witofrito for @nbcnews
Story by Anagilmara Vílchez and Mike Hixenbaugh
Produced by @mattnighswander
Recent work for @nbcnews over the death of Aurimar Iturriago Villegas in 2022 and the effort to return her remains back to her family in Venezuela by her cousin, Catherine Romero Ortega. See their bio for the full story.
Written by: Anagilmara Vilchez and Mike Hixenbaugh
Photo Editors: Zara Katz and Matt Nightswander 🙏🏽
Photogs: Alejandro Bonilla, Shelby Tauber, Raul Rodriguez
