Skip to main content

Artist-in-Residence Program

In alignment with our grant-supported goals of centering the humanities and being in dialogue with communities harmed by environmental factors, we are launching a new week-long artistic residency program at Texas A&M. Artists engaging themes of our grant – related to environments in Texas and the borderlands – will be identified by the grant leadership team and invited to campus to exhibit their work, engage with students through classroom visits and artistic workshops, and present a lecture open to the campus community.

The work we wish to highlight through these visiting artists centers and depicts borderlands, environmental art and aesthetics. Through the implementation of the artist-in-residence program, we hope to connect the broader university and community, and inspire dialogue through the arts.

GINA GWEN PALACIOS – 2026 ARTIST IN RESIDENCE

Our 2026 Artist in Residence is Gina Gwen Palacios. She was born in Taft, Texas. She has earned an MFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design, a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Studio Art at Brandeis University, an MA from The University of Texas at Austin in Instructional Technology, a BA from Texas A&M University Corpus Christi in TV/Film and an AA from Del Mar College in Radio/Television. Palacios is currently an Associate Professor and the Director for the Center of the Borderlands at The University of Texas at Rio Grande Valley.

Palacios has exhibited in the US and abroad, including the Arlington Art Center (Arlington, VA), Carlsbad Museum (Carlsbad, NM), Asya Geisberg Gallery (New York, NY), Villa Victoria Center for the Arts (Boston, MA), List Art Center, Brown University (Providence, RI), BAIT15 (Abu Dhabi, UAE), Anteism Gallery (Montreal, Canada) and the Newport Art Museum (Newport, RI).

EXHIBIT DESCRIPTION

Lone Star Horizon (March 24–28, 2026) reflects on family, labor, memory, and belonging, situating personal histories within the broader environmental and cultural landscape of the Texas borderlands. Drawing on my Mexican American heritage and my parents’ experiences as cotton pickers and migrant farm workers, and growing up between the Nueces and Rio Grande Rivers, the work considers the deep ties between people and the environments that shape their lives. These histories unfold within a landscape that is both expansive and contested.
The exhibition brings together works, primarily oil paintings, alongside installations that incorporate materials such as cotton, burlap, wood, lace, and cotton seed. These materials reference the agricultural labor that sustained many families in the region and the landscapes that continue to shape daily life across South Texas.

Throughout the exhibition, the horizon line, so prominent in the flat terrain of South Texas, emerges as a recurring structure, carrying both literal and symbolic meaning. Suggesting distance, possibility, and the persistence of cultural memory, the horizon becomes a place where land, labor, and family histories meet. Through layered imagery and materials connected to the land, the work reflects on how histories of labor, displacement, and belonging remain embedded within the landscape of the region, tracing a cultural lineage rooted in place and shaped by the generations who have lived and worked along this horizon.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Drawing on my family history and Mexican American identity, I use traditional and non-traditional materials, including paint, cardboard, cotton, and sandpaper, to highlight an often underrepresented geographic and cultural narrative. Growing up in South Texas, I absorbed my parents’ stories about migrant farm work, cotton picking, and the discrimination they experienced in the region, including being punished for speaking Spanish, having their first names anglicized, and being forced out of school. Although vast expanses of the southwestern United States were once part of Mexico, Mexican American families who have deep roots in the area are treated as outsiders, as usurpers of the land and resources their families have occupied, in many cases, for generations. I create portraits of my family’s history, using colors and materials that emphasize their connection to their surroundings and the long cultural lineage of which I am a part of. 

EVENTS OF THE WEEK