the ground beneath

INTRODUCTION

“Texicana” comes from Americana, a term which refers to the characteristic style of America and its culture. Americana’s origins can be traced back to the 1900s, but the culturally known stylistic flair is the resurgence of American Folk in the 1940s and 50s. Artists like Norman Rockwell, N.C. Wyeth defined the visual aesthetic of this movement. The war efforts were aided by this cultural resurgence, as illustrators played an important part in enlisting troops and representing a national sentiment. How does that apply to today’s culture? There is a real difference between Texan culture and the rest of America, which is why the intention for the concept focused from an Americana perspective to a Tex–Americana. As an immigrant, the experience can become an anthropologist's quest to tap into the culture. In an effort to belong to this foreign space while keeping one’s identity. In this desire for understanding community and belonging, Texicana becomes the process of mapping a personal story and shared iconography.

Texicana: Mapas Iconográficos is an evolving visual essay that reimagines Americana through the lens of migration, memory, and architecture. With technical ink drawings, projected compositions, and diagrammatic storytelling, the work traces how identity is constructed and expressed through space.

I COME FROM STRUCTURE

ARTIST STATEMENT

Architect and artist from Honduras, living in Dallas. Her work often begins with a drawing but moves through space, asking how memory, place, and identity build on each other like layers in a city.

With Texicana, she is exploring the visual language of Americana from the outside looking in. The project is a love letter to Texas, but also a critique of what gets included in its narrative. I’m interested in those moments of overlap: when a gas station becomes a church, when a billboard turns into a landmark, or when home feels uncomfortable.

Influenced by Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizomatic thinking, Graciela Hierro’s ethics of care, and Bernard Tschumi’s architectural provocations, I’m mapping something both structural and soft. Something built from longing, humor, bureaucracy, and persistence. Hoping that viewers recognize themselves in these layered maps, even if the terrain is unfamiliar.

Lines That Refuse to Close

CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS

Texicana: Mapas Iconográficos is built on an assemblage of thinkers who challenge fixed narratives of place, identity, and structure.

From Deleuze and Guattari, I borrow the concept of the rhizome: a system without beginning or end, growing sideways instead of upward. This way of thinking rejects linear identity and invites multiplicity. Each drawing in this exhibition is a lateral root: a memory, a cultural symbol, a borrowed icon. Together, they map not a nation, but a network of belonging.

“The map is open and connectable in all of its dimensions.”
-A Thousand Plateaus

Graciela Hierro reminds me that care is political. Her ética del cuidado offers a way of seeing domestic life and bodily experience as sites of resistance and meaning. The small objects, casual symbols, and stories in this work are not just personal; they are infrastructure.

“The ethics of care gives value to daily life and those who sustain it.” Ética del cuidado

From Camille Paglia, I absorb the tension between high and low. Her writings push me to treat pop culture as myth, and myth as blueprint. A Big Gulp held by Selena becomes an altar. A Buc-ee’s flag becomes a monument.

“Pop culture is the mythology of our time.” Sexual Personae

Through Bernard Tschumi, I revisit the idea that architecture is not just form; it’s an event. The drawings in this show are not just representations; they are collisions. They capture spaces where something happened or could have.

“There is no architecture without event.”
-Event-Cities

  • he Sun’s Saddle A disco-saddle becomes the sun, rising and setting over a surreal Texan horizon. A nod to nightlife, mythology, and the fascination of regional pride. Inspired by Cowboys Red River.

  • Build it.

  • Grow it.

  • Sell it.