Tiempo libre

The Rubin Center, El Paso, Texas. January-April, 2024.
Curator: Laura Augusta

UTEP Hosts Honduran Artist’s First U.S. Solo Museum Exhibition.

Contemporary art exhibition examines historical relationships between Central America, U.S.

EL PASO, Texas (Jan 17, 2024) – The University of Texas at El Paso will host Honduran multidisciplinary artist Adán Vallecillo, whose work is found in collections across the globe — from New York’s Bronx Museum to the Daros Latinamerica Collection in Zürich, Switzerland —for the debut of his first solo museum exhibition in the United States.

“It is a privilege to host Adán and for his debut to be in El Paso, a community that is at the nexus of western and Latin American culture,” said Kerry Doyle, director of the Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts, which has a multi-year commitment to contemporary art from Central America. “The center’s ability to showcase an artist of Adán’s magnitude and renown speaks to the Rubin Center’s history of giving a voice to artists whose work challenges viewers to think deeply about society and the political and social mechanisms within which we live.”

The exhibition, titled Tiempo Libre, will have an opening reception with Vallecillo on Thursday, Jan. 25 at 5 p.m. in the Rubin Center. The event is open to the public; the exhibition will run through Saturday, April 20.

The display is a mid-career survey of the artist’s work from 2010 to the present. Trained in visual art and sociology, Vallecillo creates locally relevant and research-driven projects re-using found industrial materials to consider the cultural and social intersections between Central and South America with the U.S. and Europe.

The curator Laura Augusta added, "Adán's work has been at the forefront of Central American creative and political praxis for many years, as his extensive exhibition and curatorial histories demonstrate. I believe his work to offer a crucial perspective on the major environmental questions of our time, and his extensive on-the-ground research with communities offers an important example for our students of how a studio practice can also be profoundly engaged with the world around us.”

Originally published January 18, 2024
By MC Staff UTEP Marketing and Communications