After a 10-year absence, Political Art Month is back.
A return of what was once an annual exhibition known to many San Antonio art enthusiasts as “PAM,” the resurrected celebration and show brings together the work 17 local artists inside the SMART Project Space at the 1906 Studio. The exhibition opened Saturday and will remain on view through Saturday, July 25.
In the style of past PAM’s, the pieces tackle the most urgent political challenges of our moment, from the rising threat of fascism and the encroachment of artificial intelligence to queer liberation and the fight for racial justice.
PAM is both a tribute and a reboot, according to curators Allysha Farmer and Mark Anthony Martinez. The show is intended to honor the late Gene Elder, a beloved artist, writer, organizer, archivist and community instigator who founded Political Art Month in 2010 and helped shape SA’s contemporary art scene. The last PAM was in 2016.
Farmer said the idea to revive PAM came from SMART co-founder Any Benavides, a contemporary of Elder’s.
“Gene wore a lot of hats,” Martinez said. “He was an artist, a gay rights activist, a political proponent of the arts and just a character in the city. He broadened the definition of what art could be. Protest signs, conceptual work, anything — if you call it art, it’s art.”
Martinez noted that PAM once served as a companion to San Antonio’s Contemporary Art Month, the widely attended arts gathering that happens in March.
“Folks who are connected to the arts might already be aware of CAM,” he said. “The sister companion to that would have been PAM … . Andy’s lighting this fire under us to reignite PAM as an annual effort. This is the first step in bringing it back.”
Community was a key element behind PAM, according to Farmer and Martinez. That focus has stayed front and center as they selected artists for the current exhibition.
“We want to bring as many artists together at different levels of their career,” Farmer said. “Students, emerging artists, self-taught artists, seasoned artists. We want everyone to have the opportunity to talk about what’s important to them and express it in the way they want.”
This year’s roster reflects Farmer’s wide-open approach. Works include recycled aluminum sculptures addressing the prison system, art challenging AI’s impact on human creativity and pieces exploring trans identity in a political climate where self-expression is increasingly dangerous.
“It’s undeniably political,” Martinez said. “Each piece has something to say.”
The curators are still in the process of arranging the show, a task they said they have approached with the utmost care.
“We sit with all the art and feel how it connects together,” Farmer said. “We want to be thoughtful about how the works speak to each other.”
For both curators, PAM is also an act of stewardship to carry forward Elder’s legacy of “scrappy,” community-rooted artmaking.
“Gene wasn’t about the biggest shows or the most upscale venues,” Farmer said. “He was about community, about small spaces. And that’s what we’ve been doing, bringing artists together, creating opportunities, building connections.”
Martinez agreed.
“We teach each other things,” he said. “And that intergenerational effort — that’s community. That’s Gene.”
Political Art Month opens this July at SMART Project Space inside 1906 Studios, with programming supported by INTERLOPER, the artist-run cooperative also housed in the building. The exhibition is free and open to the public.
Free, by appointment, closing reception 6-9 p.m. Saturday, July 25, SMART Project Space, 1906 Studio, 1906 S. Flores St., San Antonio, smartsa.org.
Credit: Courtesy Image / SMART Project Space
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