We are super excited to share this conversation with Gil Rocha, artist, educator and curator from Laredo, Texas. Gil is a phenomenal contemporary artist who shows around the United States and in Mexico, most recently in a solo exhibition at Presa House Gallery in San Antonio, Texas. Gil brings together his profound abilities to mix the absurd, poetic, and political into works of art that span sculpture, drawing, painting, language and sound to really speak to the place and time he is living and working in. As an artist from Laredo who left and returned, he is both insider and outsider and his work really speaks to the depth, humanity and experience that encompasses.
Gil teaches art at Vidal School of Communications and Fine Arts in Laredo, Texas and continues to be an ally to the No Border Wall Coalition who actively and creatively make work and actions that speaks truth to power to protect the river and her people. He is an ongoing friend and ally to the OBW Project, welcoming us with open arms in 2018 when we visited Laredo. Gil and Leah met during graduate school at School of the Art Institute in Chicago and became fast friends! Gil also came to Pittsburgh in 2019 to work on a mural project called Disrespecting the Border/Irrespetando la frontera: a weekend-long collaboration with the community and as part of the University of Pittsburgh's Year of Creativity initiative.
We recorded this interview (without Tereneh unfortunately) in October of 2020, before the election and so many other things to follow. We sound anxious and optimistic for 2021 to be a "new" year....and in more than one hour of talking we discuss a wide range of topics including what happens when you buy MAGA hats for art projects, the future of robots vs. truck drivers, making art in times of great crisis, the impact and experience of coming to Pittsburgh in 2019 for the 'Disrespecting the Mural' project. Enjoy, share and let us know what you think!
Gil Rocha Website
Presa House Gallery Solo Exhibition: The Things We Carry
Disrespecting the Border / Irrespetando la frontera