The colors, flavors and textures of Latin American markets get a conceptual spin in “Mercado/Material,” a vibrant new Centro de Artes exhibition on view through March 7, 2027.
Billed as a “commentary on the evolutions of shopping culture across Latinx communities,” the group show unites more than a dozen artists from San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, Chicago and New York.
While there’s plenty of eye candy to be found among the assembled photographs, paintings, sculptures, installations and mixed-media works, seasoned San Antonio viewers will likely pick up on some less-obvious factors at play. In addition to the slightly meta nature of market-inspired artwork being displayed in a gallery located in Market Square, there are some satisfying full-circle moments.
For starters, “Mercado/Material” brings to mind the short-lived heyday of the Museo Alameda, which inaugurated this space in 2007. When it opened, the Alameda was both the largest Latino art museum in the country and the first Smithsonian affiliate outside Washington, D.C.
By the time it shuttered in 2012 amid financial woes, the museum had showcased esteemed San Antonio artists and hosted world-class exhibitions. After a stint under the umbrella of Texas A&M-San Antonio, the space was reborn as the city-owned Centro de Artes, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this fall.
Years in the making, “Mercado/Material” is the brainchild of Mia Lopez, a San Antonio native who joined the Alameda as a museum educator in 2007, earned multiple masters degrees from the Art Institute of Chicago, and is currently serving as the McNay Art Museum’s first Curator of Latinx Art. During her Alameda years, Lopez worked on the Vincent Valdez and Alex Rubio collaboration “San Anto: Pride of the Southside/En El Mero Hueso” and the Jesse Treviño retrospective “Mi Vida,” among other exhibitions.
“All of those exhibitions were hugely influential to me,” Lopez told the Current.
Feeling the pull of graduate school, Lopez departed the Alameda and relocated to Chicago.
“I left the museum when they were having their financial issues and started a new chapter,” she added. “I [later] realized what an incredible educational experience it was for me. It’s full circle in that it’s in some ways bizarre to be back working in the space, and yet it feels very natural. The city has done such a wonderful job of preserving the idea of an artistic creative space right here in downtown — and making sure that we have access to the arts for everybody.”
The curatorial spark for “Mercado/Material” arrived after Lopez returned home from Chicago.
“I wanted to immerse myself back into the local arts community and I was thinking about exhibition-making from a different perspective,” she said. “The city had an open call and I was really inspired because I had seen some incredible exhibitions in this space. I thought about site specificity, the history of the market and all of the joy and exuberance. [I also thought about all] the labor that goes on behind the scenes — the stories that are told and untold.”
As luck would have it, Lopez’s invitation to organize “Mercado/Material” came just as she was accepting her role at the McNay.
“I was like, ‘I’ll figure out how to juggle these two things,’” Lopez recalled. What ended up happening was that they actually fed into each other. The work that I do is really about working with living artists [and] thinking about the cultural fabric of San Antonio — but also how that relates to the larger art world. So the artist list that I came up with three years ago shifted.”
Informed by her hometown and her 11 years in the Midwest, that artist list comes to light cohesively in “Mercado/Material.” Fittingly, the show begins in a room highlighting works by two kindred spirits: fast-rising painter Eva Marengo Sanchez and late local legend Chuck Ramirez.
Effortlessly falling into conversation with one another, Ramirez’s stark photographs of bedraggled piñatas are cut from the same cloth as Sanchez’s photorealistic paintings of fruit cups.
“Eva was somebody I knew I wanted to feature because of the photorealistic approach that she takes and her very specific lens on food items from San Antonio. It speaks [to] so much of the market,” Lopez said. “And of course Chuck is somebody who is not only an iconic San Antonio artist but has had a great impact on the way that we think about Latinx esthetics.”
While Ramirez’s and Sanchez’s poppy celebrations of everyday objects will be familiar to San Antonio art fans, “Mercado/Material” does a commendable job of bringing unusual suspects into the fold. Born in San Miguel de Allende and now based in Houston, Guadalupe Hernandez puts an unexpected spin on the decorative art of papel picado. Although familiar at first glance, his hand-punched paper panels swap out traditional imagery for everyday items such as household cleaners and tools.
“I had seen how Guadalupe wasn’t just commissioning papel picado … he actually immersed himself into learning this craft,” Lopez said. “A lot of [his projects] are about labor. Conceptually, I felt that that was also an important gesture — to train himself into this craft, which is time-consuming [and] physically demanding.”
Mirroring Lopez’s own trajectory, San Antonio-born, Chicago-based artist Sarita Garcia draws creative inspiration from the markets, panaderías and hand-painted signage that can be found in both cities. For her area of “Mercado/Material,” Garcia created a silkscreened textile installation titled El Swap-O-Rama that functions as a vivid backdrop for ceramic vessels adorned with images of local landmarks, including the bygone treasures Karam’s and Randy’s Rodeo.
“When I first met Sarita she was primarily working in printmaking, [but] as time progressed she began to experiment with ceramics,” Lopez said. “It’s always incredible when an artist is able to take two completely different mediums and excel in both of them — but also translate the aesthetics and the concepts fairly seamlessly across mediums.”
New York-based Jesus Benavente, another San Antonio export, had been on Lopez’s radar long before “Mercado/Material.” Informed by pop culture, his projects frequently involve performative elements. When Lopez invited him to be a part of the exhibition, he accepted but couldn’t give her a clear idea of what he’d be contributing.
“I trusted him and let him have free rein to create something that was truly site-specific and site-responsive,” Lopez said.
Inspired by viral TikTok videos of people dancing with abandon at the Poteet flea market, Benavente created Me Buscas, Te Miro, Baila Con Migo — a makeshift stage surrounded by mirrors.
“[The people in those videos] are literally performing for the camera, kind of peacocking,” Lopez said. “[Benavente’s installation] makes you want so badly to enter the dance floor yourself.”
Similarly performance-minded, Rio Grande Valley-based Mexican artist Josue Rawmirez coined the term piñatabstract to describe the sculptures he builds from discarded piñata scraps. Nodding to Chicago art star Nick Cave’s elaborate “Soundsuits,” Rawmirez’s “Piñata People” come to light at Centro de Artes in the form of life-size creatures dripping with tissue paper.
“I love what Josue has done by taking the broken piñata pieces and transforming them — literally turning trash into treasure,” Lopez said. “[His work] speaks to the idea of the market itself as material, the idea of there being many layers to the story, and a life for these objects beyond their original function. [But it also speaks] to the aesthetics of rasquachismo, which has been a major influence for me. [It’s] also synonymous with San Antonio: the idea of embracing and making do with what you have.”
Ask any old-school San Antonio art scenester what their favorite memory of the Alameda is and they’ll likely mention local artist Franco Mondini-Ruiz’s long-lasting installation Botánica. Packed with votive candles, milagros, religious figurines and mystical tchotchkes salvaged from bygone botánica Casa Mireles, the installation encapsulated the strange magic Mondini-Ruiz conjured in his legendary South Flores gallery-shop Infinito Botánica. Although esteemed San Antonio photographer Al Rendón contributed a wealth of images that fit perfectly into the context of “Mercado/Material” — including vintage slices of life captured in Market Square — his photograph of Mondini-Ruiz’s Botánica feels particularly relevant here.
Nodding to that installation and its brilliant blurring of the lines between art and commerce, Mexico City-born San Antonio artist Daniela Oliver de Portillo took over the same corner pocket of the gallery with Mercado de Central de Flores. Drawing from childhood memories of her mother’s flower shop in Mexico, de Portillo created an interactive installation that invites gallery-goers to pick out a laser-cut paper flower, adorn it with a message, and leave it in a vase affixed to the wall.
“An everyday purchase can hold a whole history of belonging,” de Portillo said. “What resonates with me is how a place of commerce can go beyond that and become a symbolic space for cultural expression. Everything becomes deeply personal and deeply universal at the same time. Isn’t that the type of connection Franco inspired and [which] we all seek?”
“That’s another full-circle moment. It’s bringing this idea of commerce into the gallery,” Lopez said of Mercado de Central de Flores.
With a window that looks directly onto Market Square, de Portillo’s contribution to “Mercado/Material” drives the exhibition concept home while providing space for the narrative to evolve. And like Mondini-Ruiz’s Botánica, it will likely emerge as a fan favorite thanks to its participatory nature and camera-ready setting.
“There’s been a really positive response to this work and I think that speaks to the community’s desire to see these stories, to hear from these artists,” Lopez concluded. “And I think the fact that we have in dialogue artists that are based in San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, Chicago and New York — all in one space — speaks to how pervasive these themes are. It resonates with our community, but it goes so, so far beyond that.”
Free, 10:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesday-Friday, noon-5 p.m. Saturday-Sunday through March 7, 2027, Centro de Artes, 101 S. Santa Rosa Ave., (210) 206-2787, sa.gov.
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