“Valleyisms,” an exhibit about class, masculinity, family and the Rio Grande Valley by UTRGV art senior Juan José Delgado, is on display in the UTRGV Visual Arts Building Gallery in Edinburg.
Delgado said the works depict the Valley from how he perceived it as a child and now.
The exhibit features paintings with mediums of acrylics and watercolors. The paintings range from personal emotional paintings, such as “Pepe Feeling Sad in the Truck,” to a self-portrait, “Forging of the Self,” and a series of miniature paintings that Delgado created from traveling throughout the Valley.
“I have a series [of paintings] that I mirrored as in the contrast of the men in my life growing up, how I compared my father to other men,” Delgado said. “How I saw the things that are dominant in my life and in the Valley since I perceived it then.”
The exhibit is sponsored by the Office of Engaged Scholarship and Learning. Delgado, a native of Edinburg, said the idea for “Valleyisms” came from wanting to explore and research identity. With a minor in cultural anthropology, he said he started by looking at how cultures operate in a family function and how they perceive gender roles and masculinity.
Delgado said he centered his research for the exhibit on the Valley.
“[The Valley] was something that stood out to me,” he said. “Growing up in the Valley was very distinct. It was home. It was something that I recognized always that was my constant in my life, even though we traveled through different states and worked in different towns.”
Working as a migrant farmworker, Delgado said he noticed how other cultures lived and interacted in the United States and started making distinctions in his home region and family.
Having certain imagery that locals consider to be unique to the Valley, such as palm trees and orange groves, Delgado said a lot of other “Valleyisms” are just systems of poverty.
“As a migrant farmworker … we’ve traveled to Louisiana, Georgia and … we’ve seen these littles houses on cinder blocks and, so, some [people] that maybe feel that the Valley has this as an iconic imagery … I think it’s part of the American experience,” he said. “It’s not necessarily a Valleyism. So, I see Valleyism as more of a state of mind.”
Wanting to dig deeper for the project, Delgado asked himself, “Why am I the way I am? Why do I believe the things that I do? Is it beneficial?” this led him to think about masculinity and his father.
Paintings of his father, his beloved Ford F-150 pickup truck, his uncle’s Chevy pickup truck and his fruit stand business is what came out of it, with Delgado navigating a range of emotions through the process.
Admiring those men in his life, Delgado compared and contrasted them and masculinity for his project. Although his uncle was involved in his family, his father was the opposite.
“He was very emotionally absent,” he said about his father. “He wouldn’t share feelings. … He rarely interacted with [the family].”
“Pepe Feeling Sad in the Truck,” based on a picture on his birthday from his mother, Delgado said it was the most emotion that he saw in his father.
“He would deny himself that expression of emotion and, as an artist, I express myself with emotion about everything,” Delgado said, holding back tears. “Trying to understand how passionate I can be about him, somebody that showed me little or no emotion … this is my form of making peace with that. It’s something that I wrestled with. He provided for us, but he was never there. This is what I know of him. I know more details about that truck than I know about him.”
Delgado’s wife and fellow artist Dominique Delgado told The Rider she is proud of his first solo exhibition. Being married for five years, Delgado, an African American woman, said with their ethnicity, culture and upbringings being different, through his art she was able to learn more about him, his family and the Valley.
“I think it’s a really heartfelt, touching exhibit,” Dominique Delgado said of her husband’s work. “I also think to have conversations of masculinity and manhood and to have men define ways of being masculine, embodying masculinity and the roles that they want to play is extremely important. … I feel like all of those conversations can be sparked by the art in this exhibit.”
Being with him step by step for the project, she said she encourages UTRGV students to step out of their comfort zone and check out the exhibit in the Visual Arts Building, located at 2412 S. Closner Blvd.
“And to question their own perceptions of masculinity and to consider the relationships that they have with the men in their family,” Dominique Delgado said. “And whether those relationships are satisfactory, or whether those relationships have some room for improvement. And if they do have room for improvement, what would they like that improvement to be.”
“Valleyisms,” which opened Jan. 23, will close with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. Feb. 17. Admission is free. The gallery is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.