Santa Barraza b. 1951

Santa Barraza is a contemporary Chicana/Tejana artist. Barraza’s imagery is often focused on themes of spirituality, folklore, and goddesses. Her oeuvre is infused with Mayan codices, Aztec symbolism, and familial and personal histories; “I reinterpret and register all these as cultural, visual, iconographic manifestations of my identity.”Barraza paints representations of Nepantla, a mythic “Land Between,” a term first used by Nahuatl-speaking people of Mexico during Spanish colonization. Her work depicts the historical, emotional, and spiritual land between Mexico and Texas, between the real and the celestial, and between present reality and the Aztec and Mayan mythic worlds.

Barraza received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1975 and a Master of Fine Arts in 1982 from the University of Texas at Austin. Barraza taught at higher education institutions for 34 years, including Texas A&M University-Kingsville, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Penn State University. Barraza’s work has been globally exhibited in the US, Mexico, Italy, Spain, Germany, Austria, Argentina, and France, including The Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Chicago, Illinois, Austin Arts Museum in Austin, Texas, and the National Gallery of American Art of the Smithsonian, in Washington, D.C. Her work is the subject of the monograph Santa Barraza, Artist of the Borderlands published by Texas A&M University Press.

Her work is featured in numerous permanent collections, such as the San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX; The Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; and The National Museum of Print, Mexico City, Mexico, among others. Barraza was awarded the  2025 Latinx Artist Fellowship, a first-of-its-kind initiative that recognizes 15 of the most compelling Latinx visual artists working in the United States today.