Organizers of the Texas Biennial have announced the fifty-one artists and five venues that will be participating in its seventh edition, slated to run from September 1, 2021, through January 31, 2022. Titled “A New Landscape, a Possible Horizon,” the biennial is cocurated by artistic directors Evan Garza and Ryan K. Dennis and will for the first time feature artists whom the organizers have termed “Texpats”—“Texas natives and artists with deep connections to the Lone Star State working in any part of the world”—as well as international artists whose work takes Texas or its history as its subject matter. Further, whereas previous iterations of the biennial, founded in 2005 by Austin-based nonprofit Big Medium, took place in a single venue, this year’s version will be hosted by five venues in two cities.
Participating are San Antonio’s studio at Ruby City (August 1–January 30, 2022), Artspace (August 5–December 26), San Antonio Museum of Art (August 19–December 5), and McNay Art Museum (September 1–January 9, 2022), as well as Houston’s FotoFest (September 2–November 13).
“The 2021 Texas Biennial is spread across San Antonio and Houston in order to realize a diversity of practices and explore a vast landscape of disciplines, themes, and historical events relevant to both Texas and contemporary global discourse,” said Garza in a statement. “Principal themes of the project—the mutable histories contained within objects and people, activism and issues of racial and social justice, and narratives unique to the history and land of Texas—are examined in multiple creative disciplines and across multiple sites.”
Among the artists participating are multidisciplinary collective Filipinx Artists of Houston, filmmaker Ja’Tovia Gary, painter and comics artist Trenton Doyle Hancock, painter Donald Moffett, video artist Sondra Perry, performance artist Paul Soileau (aka CHRISTEENE), and conceptual artist Baseera Khan.
“I am thrilled to be in dialogue with our artists about what has been resonating with them,” said Dennis in a statement, noting that the Covid-19 crisis had made the selection process especially fraught. “It is such an unprecedented time to be making work and having a specificity around Texas and the influence of this complex state. My hope is that people explore with us, with our artists, the expansiveness of the constellation we are creating with some beautiful, brilliant minds.”
The full list of artists is below.
Regina Agu
Adrian Armstrong
Jarrod Beck
Travis Boyer
Ari Brielle
Tay Butler
Gregory Michael Carter
JooYoung Choi
Adriana Corral
Jamal Cyrus
Colby Deal
Melvin Edwards
Filipinx Artists of Houston
Ja’Tovia Gary
John Gerrard
Abhidnya Guge
Ryan Hawk
Trenton Doyle Hancock
House of Kenzo
Baseera Khan
In Plain Sight (Cassils and Rafa Esparza)
Ariel René Jackson
Tomashi Jackson
Virginia Jaramillo
Ann Johnson
Autumn Knight
Annette Lawrence
Rick Lowe
Matt Manalo
Lynne McCabe
Xavier McFarlin
Donald Moffett
Steve Parker Sondra Perry
Phillip Pyle II
Stephanie Concepcion Ramirez
PJ Raval
Irene Antonia Diane Reece
Graham Reynolds
Adam Marnie & Aura Rosenberg
Mich Stevenson
Ronald Rael & Virginia San Fratello
Xavier Schipani
Kaneem Smith
Paul Soileau (aka CHRISTEENE)
Kara Springer
Lanecia Rouse Tinsley
Vincent Valdez
José Villalobos
Alisha Wormley
Jasmine Zelaya