Xicanx: Dreamers + Changemakers | Soñadores + creadores del cambio, a sweeping exhibition at the Contemporary at Blue Star in San Antonio, features works by 32 artists. Nearly two-thirds of these artists are from San Antonio, which endows the show with a very heavy local accent. Several artists are from California. The states of New Mexico, Colorado, Illinois, and Arizona are also represented, mostly by one artist each. Xicanx is a reduced version of the exhibition presented in a far larger space at the Museum of Anthropology (MOA) at the University of British Columbia in conjunction with The Americas Research Network (ARENET). It is curated by Jill Baird, former Curator of Education at MOA, and Greta de León, Executive Director, ARENET. The exhibition website has a full listing of artists and a short curatorial statement.
This is an exhibition with big ambitions. Chronologically, Xicanx stretches from 1972 (three works are from the 1970s) to a 2024 installation. It includes some of the initiators of the Chicano art movement, as well as mid-career and relatively emerging artists. Xicanx also has a certain amount of geographical diversity, as noted above. “Dreamers” and “changemakers” are fairly broad and fluid concepts to begin with, and the exhibition is further broken down into the following categories: neighborhoods, identity, borderlands, home, and activism.
