Tierra y Mujer: Un Solo Ser is a contemporary art exhibition of clay sculptures by renowned ceramicist Verónica Castillo depicting the relationship of women to the earth.  Through a deeply contemplative artistic practice, Castillo creates images of women and earth intertwined as allegorical representations of rebirth, regeneration, and regrowth.  By focusing on literal, metaphorical and symbolic representations of indigenous women engaged in daily activities, such as planting and harvesting food, grinding corn, talking to birds, climbing trees, she hopes to expand how we understand procreation.  While women are traditionally depicted as mothers, Castillo wants to honor women as life affirming radical matriarchs, caretakers of the earth, that also birth ideas and dreams.

The exhibit also marks the beginning of an ongoing exchange between two Mexican artists living in different parts of the United States, Verónica Castillo (San Antonio, TX) and Blanka Amezkua (Bronx, NY).  Castillo will create Tierra y Mujer: Un Solo Ser to be exhibited both at AAA3A in the South Bronx and Galeria Eva in the Southside of San Antonio.  The following year, Amezkua will create a solo exhibition that explores the illustrations found in the Codex de la Cruz-Badiano, created in 1552, through a contemporary papel picado approach that will in turn be exhibited in New York and San Antonio.  We hope that this artist exchange will be a space for artistic growth and development, an introduction of both artists' work to communities they have never travelled to, as well as an unearthing of common and divergent threads of what it means to be a Mexican working artist in the United States of America.  In this way, this project is not just an exhibition of art but an ongoing conversation centering art-making rooted in indigenous aesthetics.

The Smithsonian recently commissioned renowned, third-generation ceramic artist Verónica Castillo to create a Tree of Life (or Árbol de la Vida) for The Molina Family Latino Gallery, the Smithsonian's first museum space dedicated to celebrating Latino culture and history.

Verónica Castillo is an internationally acclaimed artist from Izúcar de Matamoros, Puebla, México.  At a very young age, under the tutelage of her parents, renowned artists Don Alfonso Castillo Orta and Doña Soledad Martha Hernández Báez, she was exposed to the artistic technique of working in polychromatic ceramics, a tradition passed on from generation to generation.  Verónica continues to build upon on these traditions, while focusing on contemporary issues of injustice and inequality.  Her exhibits have achieved national and international recognition, from the Smithsonian in Washington DC to the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago to the Museo Amparo in Puebla, Mexico.  In 2013, Verónica Castillo received the National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship Award.  She is the owner of E.V.A. (Ecos y Voces de Arte), a gallery on the Southside of San Antonio.  Together with an international network of artists, E.V.A. offers the space and support for various forms of cultural art to thrive.

web:   Hand-building a Ceramic Tree with Verónica Castillo - Tree of Life

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Discussion & Event at La Morada restaurant with the artist Veronica Castillo, food activist, owner and chef Natalia Mendez.   Rosa Ruíz moderates...

Event organized by AAA3A and A TODO DAR.