Salvador Jiménez-Flores by Charles Moore: Recording marginalized stories.

Interview May 26, 2025

Installation view of Salvador Jiménez-Flores, El árbol del medio ambiente en la villita / The Environmental Tree of Little Village, 2020, terra-cotta, black stain, glaze, wax, and gold luster, 10 × 8 × 2 feet. Photo by Michael Tropea. Courtesy of the artist.

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Interdisciplinary artist Salvador Jiménez-Flores tells stories through the lens of his lived experience in both Mexico and the United States. The son of a farmer, his early connection to earth and labor inspired his work with clay and materials like woven palm fronds. He notes that if artists are meant to offer a reflection of society, he hopes to add an extra layer of awareness to this practice. To achieve this, he examines the politics of identity, scrutinizing issues like colonization and migration through socially conscious installations, public art, and studio art. Drawing from his multicultural upbringing, he often inverts the Spanish phrase ni de aquí, ni de allá (“not from here, not from there”), choosing instead to embrace the idea of being both from here and also from there. According to Jiménez-Flores, the purpose of making art is to create striking human connections. 

Charles MooreSo much of your work speaks to the intersection of hybridity and identity. How do you approach the idea of home in your practice, both physically and conceptually? 

Salvador Jiménez-FloresI think the idea of home and belonging is probably what brought out the artist in me. Growing up in Mexico, the son of a farmer, I worked with my hands on the earth. Now I work with clay. Home is about a complex relationship between the United States and Mexico forged over the centuries. As a third-generation immigrant, I began to see patterns that tie to political decisions and treaties between the two countries. 

CMAnd moving here, how did it affect you personally? 

SJFArriving in the States, not speaking the language or understanding the education system, was a huge transition. Then I stumbled upon photography. That was a window that showed me the power of visuals that could speak for themselves and tell their own stories. That’s when I decided to make work that told the story of the people of my community. 

CMSo what’s home to you? 

SJFI’ve come to realize that you just make home wherever you plant yourself. Many see themselves living in this in-betweenness of Mexican American culture. But for me, surprisingly, it’s more the idea of carrying these two languages and cultures, this duality of seeing the world any place I’m at.

Salvador Jiménez-Flores, Eagle, Serpiente, Nopalli, 2023, brass, cast iron, electroplated brass, clay slip, site-specific installation. Photo by Michael Tropea. Courtesy of the artist.

CMHas there been a difference in the way you work in the United States and in Mexico? 

SJFThe work I’ve been doing in Mexico has a lot to do with the Ngiba community of Puebla. It’s not only learning this craft; it’s also a very mystical and organic experience working with the limited resources you have. It’s quite different from what I’m used to doing in the States. For one thing, the idea of homelessness keeps following me, the sense of having to capture that need for home or belonging. 

CMYeah, I can relate to that. So how have you gone about bringing order into such a hybrid experience? 

SJFIt started long ago with my search for purpose. It was crucial for me to find that purpose through recounting stories of the marginalized folks in the United States, especially communities I’m close to.

“Comfort limits creativity. That’s why I like to jump to other materials to start anew.” 

— Salvador Jiménez-Flores

CMAnd how does your sense of purpose influence your exploration of such diverse materials? How do their properties dictate the narratives you tell? 

SJFJust by putting yourself in the state of trusting the process, you stumble upon different mediums. I analyze the histories attached to them and see how that can enrich the content of my work. It’s important not to get too comfortable with materials, though. 

CMWhy so? 

SJFComfort limits creativity. That’s why I like to jump to other materials to start anew. Then it’s so refreshing to come back to a medium I’m passionate about, such as drawing in clay. I can see it in novel ways not possible if I had stayed within the ceramic circle. Another example is my woven-palm project. That, in itself, has pushed me to explore other mediums or techniques that I wasn’t even considering. 

CMWhen you’re working on public art and things that engage with communities, how do you balance personal expression with collective dialogue? 

SJFThe important thing about work in the public realm is that it’s a collective effort, not necessarily about your personal views. It’s about the site. It has been most consequential how the three great muralists from Mexico—Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros—used a storytelling approach to communicate ideas through visuals to largely illiterate people.

Salvador Jiménez-Flores, Kajne: Presagio cósmico, 2024, steel, woven palm, blown glass, thread, performative woven palm sculptures. Courtesy of the artist. 

CMWas it difficult submerging your own voice to the community voice? 

SJFI learned to be heavily dependent on listening to them, understanding their struggles and hopes, and trying to encapsulate that in visual forms. What I love about public art is the sense of empowerment it gives the participants. A lot of where this has succeeded is with the nomadic sculpture activations in the Boston Urbano Project and the culture of murals in some of Chicago’s neglected spaces. I can think about the Declaration of Immigration mural I did with the youth in Pilsen—just words and typography—that was embraced by the community. 

CMSpeaking of embracing, how do you balance embracing humor with serious topics like colonialism, migration, and identity? 

SJFMy work is very much inspired by Afrofuturism, especially when thinking about world-building. I’m a huge fan of Sun Ra and his space music that transcends time. And, like you mentioned, what’s also really interesting is how a lot of political events can be addressed through humor, as we can see with Mexican singer-songwriter Rodrigo González and the Funk Ceramic movement in the turbulent 1960s. That makes content with a deeper message more accessible to ordinary folks. 

CMSpeaking of appealing to a broader audience while staying true to yourself, do you feel that your work is a form of activism? 

SJFI think so. Just the word activism is an idea of someone advocating for a cause. I definitely think of art being a voice maybe for underrepresented or marginalized folk and making a human connection. 

CMI want to pick up on what you said about collaboration. Why is collaboration important to you, and how can other artists learn from it? 

SJFThe fascinating thing about collaboration is that you are allowing other people to enlarge your vision. Yes, I could come up with ideas, but I am completely relying on the skills of the local people. I’ve gone to glass residencies where I’m not even a glassblower, but it was amazing to see how they would translate my drawings into new material.

Salvador Jiménez-Flores, Kutha/Máscara Series, 2025, blown glass, kiln- formed glass, stoneware, woven palm, die palm, oxide stain, glaze, white gold luster, various sizes. Courtesy of the artist.

CMAs a professor, what do you hope to impart to the next generation of artists, particularly those from underrepresented communities that go into elite art schools like the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC)? 

SJFIn college I met the only professor of color, an African American, who introduced me to the writings of W. E. B. Du Bois, particularly The Souls of Black Folk. After my MFA, I set out to become the Latinx professor I never had. At SAIC, I saw at once the gap that needed to be bridged with students of color. I could feel what they were going through, especially in the way they were being trained to critique. A lot of the professors would stay on the formal elements of art appreciation but seemed to shy away from the cultural or identity aspects of the work. And doing ceramics, I feel like a lot of the ceramic history is also very slanted toward this white gaze, this very Eurocentric lens. That’s how The Color Network, launched in 2018, was formed for the advancement of artists of color working with clay. Now they can be mentored, ask questions, and see a database of many artists who might look like them. 

CMYour exhibition Interlace at SKETCH in Bogotá, Colombia, explores new dimensions in your work. What can you tell me about the concept, and how does it expand on your previous projects? 

SJFI’m really excited to be part of this three-gallery exhibition with Kates-Ferri Projects, CAM Galería, and SKETCH. I can bring work to Colombia that started in Mexico. This project incorporates, among other things, the palm-weaving work done with the Ngiba community. This is one of the main projects that I want to expand on by transforming these woven forms—soft sculptures, if you like—into metal.

Salvador Jiménez-Flores: Interlace is on view at SKETCH in Bogotá, Colombia, until May 31; Jiménez-Flores’s work can also be seen in BUSTED: Contemporary Sculpture Busts at Frederick Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigan, until September 20.

Support BOMB’s mission to deliver the artist’s voice.

Charles Moore is a critic and curator. He has written seven books, including The Black Market: A Guide to Art Collecting (2020) and Art and Economics (2024). His most recent book, 24-Hour Interview (2025), was published by Mousse.

Salvador Jiménez-Flores and Rasquache Futurism

Jun 4, 2024 Written By Yashi Davalos

To look at today’s infrastructural development through the American capitalist lens is to recognize how it embraces simplified aesthetics to depict visions of a white future. Modern art, too, often employs minimalism to look forward at the expense of rich storytelling. Standing in stark opposition to this style of art is Salvador Jiménez-Flores, who incorporates Rasquachismo, the Chicano practice of reusing and repurposing, to envision a new kind of future—one that centers Black and brown perspectives. In Arte-Sano: Soy libre porque pienso at the Belger Crane Yard Gallery in Kansas City, MO, the Mexican artist uses transmigratory world-building and nonlinear expressions to dismantle reductive perceptions of Latinx art and explore the politics of identity. 

Through his art, Jiménez-Flores examines how musicality, generational relationships to craftsmanship, and iconography have shaped industrialization and migratory patterns. He began forming this point of view across several residencies including the Kohler Arts Industry, Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, among others. Each residency lets the artist investigate culture through time and labor while strengthening their practice. For example, Jiménez-Flores’s work with clay reflects the pre-Columbian assimilation of working with the earth and his family’s legacy of farming; his work with metal at Kohler considers industrial labor.

In the gallery, there are two bronze emergences: one that appears to sprout from a pedestal and the other from a moving wall. Titled El surgimiento de una nueva realidad (The Rise of a New Reality) the bronze cast mimicries of Jiménez-Flores’s head are set against tribal markings on the wall and pedestal—the separation representing a fragmented voyage. In many aspects, the neo-Columbian tribal markings reflect the different identities one must adopt through migration, as is the case with his family who moved back and forth between the United States and Mexico. 

Salvador’s great-grandfather first arrived in the Midwest in the 1900s for railroad construction, starting the family’s relationship to the area as a traquero. Decades later, his father would migrate through the Bracero Program, which invited Mexican nationals to come to the U.S. from the 1940s to 1960s for temporary agricultural work. His father eventually made his way back to Chicago in search of job stability but later, in the 1980s, the family returned to Mexico, where Salvador was born. At 15, Jiménez-Flores rejoined his family members who had once again found themselves in Chicago. 

With Arte-Sano, Jiménez-Flores depicts identity through a shared consciousness and collective, generational stories.  For example, in the Árbol de vida series, he merges terracotta, black stain, glaze, wax, and gold luster to represent the conditions Black and brown communities endured in the Little Village area of South Side Chicago—a place currently feeling the effects of environmental racism. 

 The messages in the pieces are clear: “We can’t breathe,” “Aire limpio,” “Hell no to Hilco,” the latter referencing the company that, in 2020, irresponsibly handled the implosion of a coal power plant. Jiménez-Flores’s powerful words suggest that one cannot thrive in toxic environments and the best way to resist and fight is to come together as a community.  The verticality of the sculptures symbolizes the artist’s commentary on disrupting this social hierarchy through narrative.

On top of challenging storytelling methods, Jiménez-Flores’s self-portrait sculptures resist traditional concepts of time by juxtaposing elements of Afrofuturism and Rasquache Futurism—two theories that examine labor and time in nonlinear ways. 

Sun Ra, recognized as the father of Afro-futurism, influenced the concept through space music being a tool to combat infrastructural time. Similarly, this exhibition’s title is a nod to a Calle 13 song, “Yo Soy Libre Porque Pienso,” in which Residente, a.k.a René Pérez Joglar, speaks of how society pushes for assimilation, which leaves him feeling mentally subdued. Instead, the rappero claims that self-liberation is possible by filling your time as you wish, even sitting through boredom, in contrast with work, which adheres to strict schedules and depletes us in the process. 

 It is this relationship to time that influences the layout of this exhibition and how you experience Jiménez-Flores’s work. You are free to explore the work from any point—a remark on how identity and migration intersect without a fixed beginning or end.

In another section of the exhibition, a trio of clay sculptures appear horizontally. Titled I Am Not Who You Think I Am, this series includes an industrialesque assemblage of the El Milagro tortillas logo and Jiménez-Flores’s head, a split cast of Mexican Revolution figure Emiliano Zapata, and a depiction of Native American phenotype. 

This portraiture addresses the intersectionality between imaging uninterrupted Indigenous futures—that is, those without imperial colonial intervention—and the idea of migration as resistance. This surrealist impression of what one might classify as pre-Columbian art challenges the concept of linear time for Americans who accept the chronological interpretation of art history.

Jiménez-Flores’s relationship to Sun Ra is apparent in his use of fire. Within the Monuments and Memorial series, fire appears to be ceremonial. The memorial aspect also speaks to being of the land and rising from the ashes, suggesting rebirth. Tracing the manipulation of American emblems within the gallery, the transformation of symbols within the context of Rasquache Futurism presents the clash between industrial labor and land expansion. The ceramics mimicking the American eagle also represent the United States’s national bird but also represent the land before the Louisiana Purchase. 

With antenna-like features on their heads, the eagles embody both the U.S. and Mexico and their shared history and future. Seemingly from another dimension, the eagle sculptures of the Kitschy Americana series are at the center of the exhibition, once again breaking away with conceptions of linear time. 

Through various manipulations, Jiménez-Flores shows that meritocracy has no linear reference because the narratives of laborers only receive praise in fragments, which means we miss out on the full truth. Jiménez-Flores’s practice waves a thread through different timelines to explore intersectional narratives of migration. This signals that growth under Rasquache Futurism is about continuously reclaiming time, so we can continue to reshape our understanding of the truth.

Yashi Davalos (Yashira Lopez Davalos) b.1995, is an artist, writer, and independent curator. Her upbringing as an Afro-Latine, Atlanta native mobilizes her objective to build artistic dialogue critiquing non-monolithic aspects of identity. Yashi is currently the curatorial fellow at The Charlotte Street Foundation in Kansas City where she currently lives and works. Davalos’ writing has been featured in Burnaway and Sixty Inches from Center. Her art has also been exhibited throughout New Orleans, at Plug Gallery in KCMO, Mint Gallery ATL, and In Partnership with Elevate ATL for Atlanta Art Week.

https://www.latinxproject.nyu.edu/intervenxions/salvador-jimenez-flores

Language and Resistance: A Review of “eagle, serpiente, nopalli” by Salvador Jiménez-Flores at National Museum of Mexican Art

NEWCITYART
BY EMMA RIVA | JANUARY 17, 2024

Salvador Jiménez-Flores, installation view of “eagle, serpiente, nopalli.” Courtesy of NMMA/Photo: Michael Tropea.

Salvador Jiménez-Flores’ “eagle, serpiente, nopalli” rolls three languages into one cohesive and thought-provoking show in Pilsen’s National Museum of Mexican Art (NMMA). The eagle portion of the title is in English, serpiente in Spanish, and nopalli in Nahuatl. The multilingual title serves as the guiding principle for the show and is one of the most incisive and effective uses of language I’ve encountered in the arts. A good title goes a long way, and Jiménez-Flores’ is no conceptual word salad but a perfect summation of the complexity within his exhibition.

The eagle “refers to the bird native to the Americas that has been appropriated as a symbol of nationalism by the United States”; the serpiente refers to “aspects of the Mexican gods Coatlicue and Quetzalcoatl recast as the symbols of biblical evil by colonizers who sought to remake the Aztec Empire into a Christian extension of Spain”; and the nopal cactus “holds its root language—Nahuatl—close as it resists translation.”

“eagle, serpiente, nopalli”‘s placement in the museum’s Xicágo Gallery—where NMMA highlights local artists—is part of what makes it so effective. A larger space might have swallowed the works, but the intimacy of the lower ceiling makes Jiménez-Flores’ sculpture and clay come even more alive. Jiménez-Flores and curator Risa Puleo centered the physical layout of the room around the metal sculpture “Space Cactus,” the artist says, and then grew the rest of the installation around it. That choice gives “Space Cactus,” which features a human-like face on a multi-limbed metal cactus, a presence that radiates throughout the room. It’s more broadly part of a ceramic installation titled “The Cosmic Life of a New World That Is Yet to Come” that sits atop an altar-like structure and has text that says “We survived” and “Our existence is our resistance” around it. Miniature cacti surround the large sculpture and flank the room’s corners.

Salvador Jiménez-Flores, installation view of “eagle, serpiente, nopalli.” Courtesy of NMMA/Photo: Michael Tropea.

It was Puleo who came up with one of the key spatial elements of “eagle, serpiente, nopalli” that makes it an engaging viewing experience, Jiménez says. Rather than using labels to delineate the artwork, Puleo intersperses parts of the curatorial statement around the room so viewers can engage with the show more as a narrative whole rather than divided up into parts. With choices like this, the show manages to walk a line of presenting symbols of hierarchy and power in a non-hierarchical manner. The eagle is an overt symbol of nationalism, the snake of power, and the nopal of survival, and all of these thematic inquiries lead back to the question of migration and its effects on personal autonomy.

Due to the relatively small amount of space in the Xicágo Gallery, the museum limits the number of visitors that could be in Jiménez-Flores’ exhibition at a time. This gives the installation work a sense of sacredness and intimacy. I found a quiet came over me when I shut the door to enter the room, and as I do with much ceramic or metalwork, I felt a closeness to the objects. They take up space just as we do. Jiménez-Flores wants to create an environment that people can feel a part of. Handprints painted in an earthy red above the doorway are a way for Jiménez-Flores to “leave a mark” and connect to pre-Columbian mural traditions. “eagle, serpiente, nopalli” uses the walls as part of the exhibition experience. Stripes and circles surround the hanging works. The stripes add to the closeness with the objects, a feeling that the walls are not just meant to constrain you but to expand. In a concept that draws so much from migration, it’s powerful to see walls not just as walls.

Salvador Jiménez-Flores, installation view of “eagle, serpiente, nopalli.” Courtesy of NMMA/Photo: Michael Tropea.

“eagle, serpiente, nopalli” is on view concurrently with Felipe Baeza’s Unruly Forms, a Public Art Fund-sponsored series of images of pre-Columbian objects on bus shelters across the city, including at 18th and Damen in Baeza’s home neighborhood of Pilsen. (Baeza’s installation closed in November 2023 and was a product of Public Art Fund’s partnership with JCDecaux, which manages bus shelters in multiple cities). Baeza and Jiménez-Flores attended high school together and though the timing of their projects was coincidental, both projects raise questions about migration and identity through kitsch. Both try to merge the fetishized “ancient” with a future that stretches beyond what a colonial society can imagine, using in Jiménez-Flores’ case science fiction and in Baeza’s case the fantastical or macabre.

“eagle, serpiente, nopalli” crystallizes some of the most profound questions about art as a whole and what it can do. How do objects change based on their context? How does memory change an object, and when does an object become a work of art? When does a room become a gallery, when does a gallery become a museum? Museum shows themselves have a kind of migratory property to them—the artwork arrives at the museum space, is on view for a moment, then is de-installed and leaves, often hastily. “eagle, serpiente, nopalli” is not just any of the single pieces within it, but the whole room, the walls, the lights, Puleo’s writing. It’s an example of how a museum setting with a thoughtful curatorial strategy uses all of the space and resources available. A guiding principle for Jiménez-Flores is “resourcefulness,” and that comes through not just in the content of the show but in its execution. With its presence in the central sculpture and placement across the space, the nopal is arguably the most prominent part of “eagle, serpiente, nopalli”—fitting that the element that resists translation is the one that comes through the most strongly.

“eagle, serpiente, nopalli” is on view at the National Museum of Mexican Art, 852 West 19th, through February 4.

New Little Village sculpture celebrates arriving immigrants: ‘We underestimate how courageous people are’

The work by Chicago-based artist Salvador Jiménez-Flores was made after Flores won the Chicago Sculpture Exhibit’s Richard Hunt Award. It’s one of 42 the exhibit is installing this month.

By  Michael Loria

  May 20, 2023, 12:33pm CDT

Salvador Jiménez-Flores, who created “Caminantes,” a 9-foot sculpture that commemorates migrants and their migration journey through the symbolism of feet and cacti, stands beside his sculpture at Manuel Perez Jr. Plaza in the Little Village neighborhood, Friday, May 19, 2023.

Pat Nabong/Sun-Times

A wayfaring sculpture, 9-feet tall with shining bronze feet that give way to a nopal-green, cactus-shaped body, landed in Little Village on Friday.

The piece, named “Caminantes” (Spanish for “wayfarers”), is by Chicago-based artist Salvador Jiménez-Flores and was unveiled Friday in Manuel Pérez Jr. Memorial Plaza on the 4300 block of West 26th Street.

Flores, a native of Mexico who now teaches ceramics at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, made the clay and cast-metal sculpture to honor Chicago’s immigrant community.

“It’s a celebration of the courage of the immigrant people that have made it to Chicago and decided to set up roots,” said Flores, 37.

“Caminantes,” a 9-foot sculpture by Salvador Jiménez-Flores, who commemorates migrants and their migration journey through the symbolism of feet and cacti, is displayed at Manuel Perez Jr. Plaza in the Little Village neighborhood, Friday, May 19, 2023.

Flores made the piece with funds from the Chicago Sculpture Exhibit as the winner of their Richard Hunt Award, which grants emerging and mid-career level Chicago artists with $10,000 to create large-scale public art installations across the city.

The Chicago Sculpture Exhibit established the Richard Hunt Award in 2021 with the namesake Chicago artist to foster diversity to Chicago’s large-scale public art scene. Flores is the second winner of the award. 

Flores’ sculpture is one of 42 that the Chicago Sculpture Exhibit is installing in May. The pieces were chosen from among 105 submissions and will be on view for a year.

The Exhibit was founded in 2001 by former Ald. Vi Daley (43rd) to bring public sculptures to the Lincoln Park neighborhood, but its reach has extended across the city with works from local and international artists.

“Caminantes,” a nine-foot sculpture by Salvador Jiménez-Flores, who commemorates migrants and their migration journey through the symbolism of feet and cacti, is displayed at Manuel Perez Jr. Plaza in the Little Village neighborhood, Friday, May 19, 2023.

Flores’ sculpture was unveiled at a small ceremony attended by Daley, Ald. Mike Rodriguez (22nd) and Jennifer Aguilar, executive director of the Little Village Chamber of Commerce, which facilitated bringing the sculpture to the park, as well as other artists and bystanders. 

The sculpture has a personal resonance for Flores, whose father was in the bracero migrant worker program, but the artist hopes it also inspires new arrivals.

“We underestimate how courageous people are to leave behind everything they know for an uncertain dream,” Flores said.

Little Village has long been a port of entry for immigrants, and Rodriguez welcomed the arrival of the Flores’ sculpture.

“A good, strong community is also about art. It’s about inspiration. It’s about young people who see themselves in the art,” he said, adding that he saw the community’s strength in the worn feet and beauty in the cactus.


The sculpture’s unveiling comes amid the city’s own migrant crisis after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s began sending immigrants to the city from the Texas border.

Already, more than 8,000 immigrants have sought refuge in Chicago, prompting former Mayor Lori Lightfoot to declare a state of emergency.

“Go four blocks that way [and] we’ve got 200 immigrants seeking refuge at Piotrowski Park,” said Rodriguez, pointing south past the sculpture to where the city has converted the fieldhouse into a temporary shelter for the new arrivals. “And now you have a piece here that speaks to their journey.”

Immigrants sheltering temporarily in Chicago neighborhoods have faced pushback in some parts of the city, with some residents suing the city to stop the move, but Rodriguez his largely immigrant and Spanish-speaking ward has welcomed them.

“I hope they stay and become a fabric of our community, as Mexican immigrants did decades ago, and eastern European and Polish immigrants did a generation before them,” the alderperson said.

None of the newer arrivals was on hand Friday, but Wetcho Coco, a native of Mexico and a longtime paleta vendor, happened upon the unveiling as it was happening. 

Coco, 70, immigrated “many, many years” ago, he said, and now relies on hot days to drive up demand for the cool, tasty treats he sells. He stopped jangling the cart bells to admire the sculpture. 

“A lot of people will come to take photos,” Coco imagined, “and they’ll remember our culture, the things of Mexico.”

Wetcho Coco, a native of Mexico and longtime Little Village paleta vendor, observes the unveiling of a sculpture that celebrates Chicago’s immigrant community.

Michael Loria/Sun-Times

Michael Loria is a staff reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times via Report for America, a not-for-profit journalism program that aims to bolster the paper’s coverage of communities on the South Side and West Side.

Bridges to Other Realities: Salvador Jiménez-Flores’ Provocative Sculptures Joe Molinaro Appears in the September 2022 issue of Ceramics Monthly.

By Joe Molinaro

Appears in the September 2022 issue of Ceramics Monthly.

“It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else.”—John Cage

For Mexican-born ceramic sculptor Salvador Jiménez-Flores, being where one is, whether in his past or present, has continually influenced him as an artist and person. Living with a foot in the two cultures of Mexico and the US, Jiménez-Flores continues his search for identity through art by using clay, metal, printmaking, and other mixed media to further define his thoughts toward life and a sense of place. As he states, “The challenge of being bicultural and bilingual is that I live in two different worlds. Everywhere I live, I am a foreigner.” And to paraphrase the renowned author Gloria E. Anzaldúa,1 who once wrote that those living as a “Nepantlera,”2 or “in the middle,” are people existing on the edge who move within multiple worlds and refuse to identify with one particular group or belief structure.

Seeking a New Path Forward

Salvador Jiménez-Flores, born and raised in Jalisco, Mexico, was educated in both the US and Italy, and has been a member of the faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) in Illinois since 2018. He has received numerous scholarships, grants, and awards, including the prestigious United States Artist Fellow Award in 2021, with each recognizing and supporting his work as an artist, educator, and community activist. Working as an interdisciplinary artist, his pieces examine the politics of identity, the state of double consciousness (e.g., being aware of both yourself and how you are viewed by the dominant culture), “the other” (a concept that describes how immigrants or minorities are positioned as inferior to dominant culture because they are seen as different), and futurism by producing a mixture of socially mindful installations, as well as public and studio-based art. Exploring topics of colonization and migration, Jiménez-Flores hopes his art can function as a window into the lives of marginalized people seeking a new path forward in a foreign land.

2 Nopal espacial (Space Cactus), 6 ft. (1.8 m) in height, brass, cast iron, rose-gold plating, brass hose, 2019. Photo: Kohler Co., courtesy of John Michael Kohler Arts Center.

For Jiménez-Flores, art is a tool for both showing respect for his own history while also serving to help him navigate the terrain of his new culture. Working primarily in an earthenware clay with low-temperature stains and glazes, he acknowledges being inspired by terra-cotta Pre-Columbian and Mexican folk art that allow him to reflect the direct connection to his ancestors and cultural history. Using the different colors achieved with red clay fired at various temperatures, each offering assorted shades of browns, oranges, and reds, helps serve to reference the color of both his skin and his people. Furthermore, by exploring the idea of mestizaje, which is the practice of fusing aspects of being both interracial and intercultural, his use of different temperatures, glazes, and clays reflects his own mestizo background and all the personal and aesthetic influences he has experienced living in two disparate countries. Through this work, he creates complex forms that help him understand and explain the angst of trying to “fit in,” something common among members of the Latinx communities in the United States. Facing the realities of chaos at the US/Mexican border, Jiménez-Flores reacts using his art to help others understand the plight of refugees and the struggles that immigrant families face each day. His story is shared with many who do not have a voice to express themselves clearly, making his own artwork an important visual language that speaks for others. And with the influence of the Mexican Muralism3 project of the 1920s, along with the Taller de Grafica4 in the 1930s, both serving as inspiration for how one might combine art and politics to bring people together and affect both social and political change, Jiménez-Flores continues producing artworks in this tradition as a way of using his own production to forge a path forward in a multiethnic society.

3 Fantasmas de las Américas, porcelain, 2016.

Identity and Migration

The artwork Salvador Jiménez-Flores creates, often using a variety of historic references, techniques, and materials, reflects a sense of rascuache,5 a common term referring to a Chicano sensibility. Rascuache, or rasquachismo, which means making do with what is available,5 or the equivalent reference to “making a silk purse out of the sow’s ear,” is something he reflects on when describing his own art. As he explains, “The way I think of rasquachismo in my art practice is the same way I combine design, craft, high art, low art, and more.” With an eclectic approach to art making, together with an influence from his Mexican culture, Jiménez-Flores’ art serves as a personal record of an immigrant’s life and dreams. Through time, he has worked to develop a rascuache-futuristic art style for an imaginary world where he can better express pre-Columbian, colonial, and post-colonial histories and aesthetics in his clay work. Pieces like the totemic Nopales Hibridos: An Imaginary World of Rascuache, take advantage of disparate parts coming together through stacked forms, colors, textures, and contemporary and historic references, each contributing to an overall look into identity and migration. 

4 l árbol del medio ambiente en la villita (The environmental tree of little village), 10 ft. (3 m) in height, terra cotta, black stain, glaze, wax, gold luster, 2020. Photo: Michael Tropea. Courtesy of the National Museum of Mexican Art.

Another sculpture in the same series, La Resistancia de los Nopales Hibridos (The Resistance of the Hybrid Cacti), Jiménez-Flores again combines dissimilar elements from the religious world, Mexican culture, and art to encompass issues of colonization, migration (voluntary or involuntary), history, and cultural appropriation. Additionally, referencing the cactus, which he knows to be a resilient plant that survives the harshest of conditions, symbolizes strength and hope for people seeking a better future in a new land. Along with essentials from the Funk Art movement and references to images of both Aztec beliefs and Catholic traditions, the La Resistancia de los Nopales Hibridos explores a personal identity of both time and place. With this irreverent, Funk Art–inspired self-portrait with his tongue sticking out combined with a portrait of Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec god of sun, war, and sacrifice,6 Jiménez-Flores has masterfully created a work that enshrines his respect for people of color everywhere using both humor and his own cultural history. Similarly, a Brown Power fist supporting the overall structure serves to represent the resistance needed for those in the minority to continue fighting for their individual rights and freedoms.

5 A Hand Gesture to Systemic Racism: Al que le quede el saco que se lo ponga, 8 ft. (2.4 m) in height, earthenware, stoneware, black stain, underglaze, glaze, wood, steel, graphite, latex paint, 2022.

6 Dos cabezas cibernéticas (Two cyber heads) from the series Kitschy Americana, 22 in. (56 cm) in width, terra cotta, black stain, underglazes, gold luster, 2021.

Connections and Injustices

Other works, such as a piece from 2020 titled El árbol del medio ambiente en la Villita (The environmental tree of Little Village), Jiménez-Flores has created a work with a connection to his community, his neighbors, and the environment, stating, “I wanted to make visible the unseen injustices that have happened in the Little Village neighborhood and its residents through decades of institutionalized and systemic racism.” His goal to highlight these injustices seen in the surrounding area of the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago, including issues of poor air quality and the physical neglect from the city that contributes to the ongoing respiratory problems for Black, Indigenous, and Latinx residents, motivates him to continually pursue art that speaks of the human condition.

7 La resistencia de los nopales híbridos (The resistance of hybrid cacti) series, 8 ft. (2.4 m) in height, terra cotta, porcelain, underglazes, gold luster, terra-cotta slip, 2016. Photo: Jenna Bascom, courtesy the Museum of Arts and Design.


8 La resistencia de los nopales híbridos (The resistance of hybrid cacti) series (detail), 8 ft. (2.4 m) in height, terra cotta, porcelain, underglazes, gold luster, terra-cotta slip, 2016. Photo: Jenna Bascom, courtesy the Museum of Arts and Design.

While addressing the topic of individual rights and identity, Salvador Jiménez-Flores strongly believes people of color have been underrepresented and marginalized for far too long. Using his art to shine a light on the issues surrounding minority concerns remains a central theme for him both professionally and personally. As an educator at SAIC, as well as throughout his entire career, Jiménez-Flores has worked to serve as a leader and role model for younger artists of color seeking their place in the larger art world. For him, diversity is about respecting, acknowledging, and finding beauty and empathy in our differences, struggles, abilities, and privilege. As a result of these issues and his own personal concerns, Jiménez-Flores has been a front runner in working collaboratively with other artists to reestablish The Color Network,7 launched in December 2018 with a mission of aiding in the advancement for people of color. While the original Color Network (1991–2008) paved the way for this later incarnation of the group, this new version of the network, one with a broader range of inclusion, was proud to carry on the name of its origins with the blessing of its creators. 

9 La resistencia de los nopales híbridos (The Resistance of Hybrid Cacti), 8 ft. (2.4 m) in height, terra cotta, porcelain, underglazes, gold luster, terra-cotta slip, 2016.

10 Soy quien soy (I Am Who I Am), red earthenware, oil, graphite, black stain, gold luster, 2014. Permanent collection: Grand Rapids Art Museum. Photo: Matt Gubancsik.

For Jiménez-Flores, it is personal, as he easily identifies the obstacles he encountered upon his arrival in the US, with the first being a lack of financial stability, cultural understanding, and English-language skills; and the second being a lack of knowledge about the educational system as a first-generation college student. Through the recollection of his early beginnings in a new land, Jiménez-Flores uses these memories to create poignant art while equally encouraging and promoting young immigrant artists hoping to forge a new path forward. As he reflects on his long journey from Mexico to the US, the words of the distinguished Latin American scholar Dr. Tomás Ybarra-Frausto hold significant meaning when he speaks of the Chicano way by asking the questions, “Who am I, where am I going, and where do I come from?” Through both his art and his teaching, Salvador Jiménez-Flores continues to seek his own answers to those questions while living a life between here and there. 

the author Joe Molinaro, professor emeritus at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, Kentucky, lives and maintains a studio practice in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. To learn more, visit http://joemolinaro.com.

1 Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa (1942–2004) was an American scholar of Chicana cultural theory, feminist theory, and queer theory. Author of Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, a book based on her life growing up on the Mexico–Texas border, which incorporated her lifelong experiences of social and cultural marginalization into her work. She also developed theories about the marginal, in-between, and mixed cultures that develop along borders, including the concepts of Nepantla.

2 Nepantla, or Nepantlera, is a Nahuatl word (from a language spoken by most inhabitants of central Mexico at the time of the Spanish conquest) that means “in the middle.”

3 Mexican Muralism refers to an art project funded by the Mexican government in the 1930s to allow artists to promote political ideas regarding the social revolution that had just recently ended so that viewers may reflect on how pivotal the revolution was in Mexican history.

4 The most influential and progressive printmaking collective of its time, the Mexican Taller de Gráfica Popular (the Popular Graphic Art Workshop or TGP) created some of the most memorable images in mid-century printmaking. Founded in 1937, the TGP emerged and evolved during antifascist and leftist politics in Mexico in the period surrounding World War II. 

5 Rascuache, or Rasquachismo is a theory developed by scholar Tomás Ybarra-Frausto, a former professor at Stanford University in the department of Spanish and Portuguese, to describe an underdog perspective in working-class Chicano communities using elements of “hybridization, juxtaposition, and integration” as a means of empowerment and resistance.

6 In Aztec mythology, Huitzilopochtli is the deity of war, sun, human sacrifice, and the patron of the city of Tenochtitlan. He was also the tribal god of the Mexicas (Nahuatl-speaking Indigenous people), also known as the Aztecs.

7 More information on the The Color Network can be found at www.thecolornetwork.org. The current version, created through group discussions at the 2018 NCECA conference, continues the tradition of the original Color Network by initiating a mission to aid in the advancement of all people of color in the ceramic arts, and by highlighting opportunities in the field and provide an artist database for teachers and curators to reference, helping them integrate a more diverse roster into their programming.


Source: https://ceramicartsnetwork.org/ceramics-monthly/ceramics-monthly-article/bridges-to-other-realities-salvador-jim%C3%A9nez-flores-provocative-sculptures#


Introducing Arcilla. Arte. Cultura. | Clay. Craft. Culture.

For English scroll down

Hola a todos,

Estás recibiendo este correo electrónico porque estás en mis contactos o porque te suscribiste para recibir un boletín trimestral con actualizaciones sobre mi arte, enseñanza o trabajo comunitario. Si no desea recibir estas actualizaciones, no dude en darse de baja.
 

Me siento muy honrado de haber sido seleccionado como becario de RaD Lab + Outside the Walls a través de Threewalls. Esta beca brindará apoyo financiero y comunitario para usar la arcilla como conducto para reunir y sanar a la comunidad a través de conversaciones, conocimiento compartido y talleres participativos centrados en el vecindario de La Villita. Espero capturar y archivar las historias de residentes de toda la vida; abogando y destacando la experiencia del inmigrante, todo moldeado a través de la versatilidad de la arcilla.

Este artista Latinx trabaja para el desarrollo de La Villita através del arte.

¡Busco colaboradores, voluntarios y, lo que es más que nada, participantes! Este es un regalo para los residentes de La Villita y todos los materiales y talleres serán gratuitos y podrás quedarte con las obras de arte que realices. Si esto es algo que le interesa o conoce a alguien que pueda estar interesado, únase a nosotros en la siguiente participación pública virtual para obtener más información sobre el proyecto.

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Estás invitado al lanzamiento del sitio web arcilla. arte. cultura. | clay. craft. culture. El artista dirigente, Salvador Jiménez-Flores, presentará un proyecto comunitario centrado en La Villita. Arcilla es un conducto para la construcción de comunidades y demostrará cómo las personas y las organizaciones pueden participar en este proyecto de arcilla gratuito y participativo. Además, Jiménez-Flores también pedirá comentarios y sugerencias de los miembros de la comunidad sobre lo que La Villita prevé para Arcilla. Arte. Cultura.

ID de reunión de Zoom: 596 692 6179 o únase a la reunión de Zoom haciendo clic en este enlace: https://saic-edu.zoom.us/j/5966926179

Interpretación en español por Renata Cassiano.

Involúcrate

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Salvador Jiménez-Flores es un artista interdisciplinario nacido y criado en Jalisco, México. Explora la política de la identidad y el estado de doble conciencia. Jiménez-Flores aborda temas de colonización, migración, “el otro” y futurismo. Su trabajo abarca desde el dibujo, cerámica, grabados y escultura de técnica mixta. Su trabajo también existe fuera de su estudio y se extiende a sus comunidades. Jiménez-Flores ha creado una serie de murales y trabajos comunitarios, como el mural La Declaración de Inmigración en Pilsen creado con estudiantes de Yollocali Arts Reach, Nomadic Sculptures y Tortilla Social con estudiantes de Urbano Project en Jamaica Plain, Boston, por mencionar algunos. Es profesor asistente de cerámica en la Escuela del Instituto de Arte de Chicago.

 

Hello Everyone,

You are receiving this email because you are in my contacts or because you signed up to receive a quarterly newsletter with updates about my art, teaching, or community based work. If you do not wish to receive these updates feel free to unsubscribe.

I am very honored to have been selected as a RaD Lab + Outside the Walls Fellow through Threewalls. This grant will provide financial and community support to use clay as the conduit for gathering and healing the community through conversations, shared knowledge, and participatory workshops centering La Villita neighborhood. I hope to capture and archive the stories of longtime residents; advocating and highlighting the immigrant experience all shaped through the versatility of clay.

This Latinx artist works for the development of La Villita, through art.

I am looking for collaborators, volunteers, and more importantly participants! This is a gift to the residents of Little Village and all the materials and workshops will be free of cost and you will get to keep the artwork you make. If this is something you are interested in or know someone who might be interested please join us in the following virtual public engagement to learn more about the project.

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You are invited to the soft launch of the website clay. craft. culture. | arcilla. arte. cultura. Lead artist, Salvador Jiménez-Flores, will present a community based project centered around Little Village. Clay is a conduit to community building and will demonstrate how people and organizations can get involved in this free, participatory, clay project. Additionally, Jiménez-Flores will also ask for feedback and suggestions from the community members on what Little Village envisions for Clay. Craft. Culture.

Zoom Meeting ID: 596 692 6179 or Join Zoom Meeting by clicking this link: https://saic-edu.zoom.us/j/5966926179

Spanish translation for this event by Renata Cassianno

Get Involved

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Salvador Jiménez-Flores is an interdisciplinary artist born and raised in Jalisco, México. He explores the politics of identity and the state of double consciousness. Jiménez-Flores addresses issues of colonization, migration, “the other,” and futurism. His work spans from drawing, ceramics, prints, and mixed media sculpture. His work also extends outside of his studio and spread throughout communities. Jimenez-Flores has created a series of murals and community-based works, such as The Declaration of Immigration mural in Pilsen created with Yollocali Arts Reach students, Nomadic Sculptures and Tortilla Social with students from Urbano Project in Jamaica Plain, Boston to mentioned a few. He is an Assistant Professor in ceramics at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

 

Grabadolandia 2018

Very excited to have completed one more Grabadolandia with Tortilla Social once again, the first and only legendary free printmaking festival in Chicago.  I am also honor to be part of the Instituto Gráfico de Chicago (IGC) since its beginnings and see how this group has grown. We believe in creating more equitable access to cultural resources and events. Our audience is overlapping communities of artists, students, youth, Latinx families, working-class families and communities of color. Thanks to everyone who make this happens! 

SAIC Welcomes 13 New Full-Time Faculty Members

Please join me in welcoming 13 new full-time faculty members to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) this fall. The new faculty members represent a diverse range of practices, media, and methodologies and exemplify SAIC’s focus on interdisciplinary studies.

In the last two years, six of the new full-time faculty members joining SAIC were former part-time faculty. The new faculty members, who will teach in six departments across the School, include Danielle Andress (Fiber and Material Studies), Jeremy Biles (Liberal Arts), Julietta Cheung (MFA 2012, Contemporary Practices), Mike Cloud (Painting and Drawing), Ryan Edwards (Liberal Arts), Maura Frana (Visual Communication Design), Marie Herwald Hermann (Ceramics), Suma Ikeuchi (Liberal Arts), Salvador Jiménez-Flores (Ceramics), Piotr Michura (Visual Communication Design), Hương Ngô (MFA 2004, Contemporary Practices), Kirin Wachter-Grene (Liberal Arts), and Jade Yumang (Fiber and Material Studies).

With the addition of these new faculty members, SAIC continues its legacy of excellence in art and design education. Information about each faculty member can be found below.

Martin Berger
Dean of Faculty and Vice President of Academic Affairs

Salvador Jiménez-Flores

Assistant Professor

Ceramics

Salvador Jiménez-Flores is an interdisciplinary artist born in Mexico and an assistant professor in the Department of Ceramics. In his work he explores the themes of colonization, migration, “the other,” stereotypes, and futurism. Most recently he completed a two-year artist residency at the Harvard Ceramics Program, Office for the Arts at Harvard University. He also served as the artist-in-residence for the city of Boston. Jiménez-Flores is a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant and was awarded the Kohler Arts Industry Residency for 2019.

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Marie Herwald Hermann

Assistant Professor

Ceramics

Marie Herwald Hermann is an assistant professor in the Ceramics department. She earned a Master of Fine Arts from the Royal College of Art in London in 2009 and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from University of Westminster. Hermann’s work is informed by the objects of the everyday. She draws meaning from the way individuals unconsciously create relationships with the domestic objects present in daily life. Solo exhibitions include Shields and the Parergon at Reyes Projects; And dusk turned dawn, Blackthorn at NADA, Miami; Northern Light, Pontiac Rise at Galerie Nec, Paris. Her work is represented in the collections of the Danish Arts Foundation; the Denver Art Museum; Sèvres Ceramics Museum, France; Nordenfjeldske Kunstindustrimuseum, Trondheim, Norway; and Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

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Julietta Cheung

Assistant Professor

Contemporary Practices

Julietta Cheung (MFA 2012) is an assistant professor in the Department of Contemporary Practices. Her work examines the contemporary American narrative of the future as it is interpreted by a diverse public. She mines and unmakes her source material—popular writing, buzz terms, and utility objects—and remakes them in her typographic prints, sculptures, installations, and reading performances. Cheung joins SAIC from Florida State University where she was an assistant professor in the Department of Art. She received her Bachelor of Science from Syracuse University and Master of Fine Arts from SAIC.

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Hương Ngô

Assistant Professor

Contemporary Practices

Hương Ngô (MFA 2004) is an assistant professor in the Department of Contemporary Practices. Ngô’s research-based practice connects personal and political histories using a conceptual, interdisciplinary, and often collaborative approach. She has exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New Museum, and Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, among others. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a Master of Fine Arts from SAIC in Art and Technology Studies, and was a studio fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program.

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Jade Yumang

Assistant Professor

Fiber and Material Studies

Jade Yumang is an assistant professor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies. His primary focus is on the concept of queer form through sculptural abstraction, installation, and performance. He joins SAIC from the University of British Columbia and Emily Carr University of Art and Design. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts with honors from the University of British Columbia and a Master of Fine Arts with departmental honors from Parsons School of Design.

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Danielle Andress

Assistant Professor

Fiber and Material Studies

Danielle Andress is an assistant professor in the Fiber and Material Studies department. Her work focuses on contemporary identity politics as mediated through popular culture and gendered craft and primarily takes the form of woven cloth. She previously taught at the California College of the Arts. Andress earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2008 and her Master of Fine Arts from the California College of the Arts in 2017.

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Jeremy Biles

Assistant Professor

Liberal Arts

Jeremy Biles is an assistant professor in the Department of Liberal Arts. Since 2008, Biles has taught courses at SAIC on religion, philosophy, writing, and photography. His research ranges across religious studies, psychoanalysis, and art theory, with special attention to eroticism, surrealism, and the category of the sacred. He is the author of Ecce Monstrum: Georges Bataille and the Sacrifice of Form. Biles holds a PhD from the University of Chicago.

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Ryan Edwards

Assistant Professor

Liberal Arts

Ryan C. Edwards is an assistant professor in the Department of Liberal Arts after having worked for two years at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga. Edwards received a Bachelor of Arts in geography from the University of California Berkeley in 2009 and a PhD in history from Cornell University in 2016. His research and teaching focus on Latin America, environmental history and geography, and prison studies. During 2018–19, Edwards will be on leave as a visiting associate research scholar at Princeton University.

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Suma Ikeuchi

Assistant Professor

Liberal Arts

Suma Ikeuchi is an assistant professor in the Department of Liberal Arts. Her research interests include diaspora, citizenship, and religion in global Asia, specifically among the diverse migrant groups in Japan. She has published articles in Ethos: Journal of the Society for Psychological Anthropology, Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, and Contemporary Japan; her first book is also forthcoming from Stanford University Press in 2019. Ikeuchi joins SAIC from the University of Alabama. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from Hokkaido University, a Master of Arts from Brandeis University, and PhD from Emory University.

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Kirin Wachter-Grene

Assistant Professor

Liberal Arts

Kirin Wachter-Grene is an assistant professor of English in the Department of Liberal Arts and coordinator of the First-Year Seminar program. Wachter-Grene’s work focuses on African American literature and culture from the late 19th century to the present, with an emphasis on gender and sexuality. She joins SAIC from New York University and received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Arizona, Master of Arts from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and PhD from the University of Washington.

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Mike Cloud

Assistant Professor

Painting and Drawing

Mike Cloud is an assistant professor in the Painting and Drawing department. He is a painter whose work examines the conditions of painting in its contemporary life among countless reproductions, symbols, and descriptions. Cloud earned his Master of Fine Arts from Yale University School of Art and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Cloud has lectured extensively on his work and issues of contemporary art theory at Cooper Union, Yale University, and Bard College among others.

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Piotr Michura

Associate Professor

Visual Communication Design

Piotr Michura is an associate professor in the Visual Communication Design department. His research interests are in areas of information design, interaction design, and typography/text visualization. His PhD research was on experimental visualizations for interaction with electronic documents for humanities researchers. In 2015 he received the Fulbright Senior Advanced Research Award. Michura is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Poland, where he received his MFA in 2001 and PhD in 2012, and the University of Alberta, Canada, where he received his MDes in 2008.

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Maura M Frana

Assistant Professor

Visual Communication

Maura Frana is a designer and educator who examines the parallels between verbal and visual. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Communications Design from Pratt Institute and has taught graphic design full time at the undergraduate and graduate levels since 2013. She was previously a visiting artist at SAIC. Frana is coauthor of the book Five Conversations on Graphic Design and Creative Writing, which examines the value of cross-disciplinary methods in graphic design.