Fronterizx: Art by M. Jenea Sanchez and Gabriela Muñoz with Jenelle Esparza focuses on twenty-first century shared and socially-engaged art practices. This exhibition features work created by the Fronterizx Collective founded by Sanchez and Muñoz during their first collaboration in 2009 on the Arizona/Mexico borderline in a project titled La Tapiz Fronteriza de La Virgen de Guadalupe and includes contemporary artworks such as the video Caldo de Pollo and the photographic series Living Altar. In addition, this exhibition features a new collaborative project between Esparza and Fronterizx. This is the first exhibition in Texas of the Fronterizx Collective, as well as the artists’ first collaboration with San Antonio-based artist Jenelle Esparza.
Fronterizx Collective is driven by the artists’ lived experiences as women of color working in the interstitial space of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Fronterizx is committed to the representation and implication of brown female bodies from their own lived experiences situated within the Sonora and Chihuahua desert ecologies. Their projects, installations, and exhibitions have appeared on the U.S.-Mexico borderline and museums including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Wheelwright Museum, and Museo de Arte de Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. In 2023 they were awarded the Arlene and Morton Scult Artist Award by the Phoenix Art Museum and a 2024 USA Artist Fellowship.
Sanchez was born and raised in the Arizona and Sonora frontera and Muñoz migrated through the U.S.-Mexico borderlands to Phoenix. Esparza is a Corpus Christi and South Texas native. Esparza, Sanchez, and Muñoz were introduced as recipients of the
2024 US Latinx Fellowship.