Made in Texas invites audiences to encounter the state as a complex cultural force whose political and social conditions quietly shape and sometimes limit the possibilities of liberty, care, and collective belonging. This exhibition situates Texas within local and global conversations about regionalism, climate urgency, labor economies, and the politics of visibility. Through material inquiry and conceptual experimentation, the participating artists—each Texas-born—probe how life in Texas, and ultimately one’s identity, is shaped by infrastructure, migration, industry, and memory.

Artists such as Ja’Tovia Gary (2019 Creative Capital Awardee), Robert Hodge, Jamal Cyrus (2008 Creative Capital Awardee), Deborah Roberts, José Villalobos, and Charisse Pearlina Weston (2024 Creative Capital Awardee) bring distinct practices that engage questions of representation, history, and place, expanding how Texas can be seen and understood through contemporary art.

Rather than presenting fixed narratives, the works in this exhibition open space for dialogue between rural and urban experience, inherited tradition and speculative futures, intimacy and monumentality. Viewers will find paintings, works on paper, sculpture, and sound elements that use regional materials and histories to interrogate systems of power while cultivating forms of care, adaptation, and resistance. By reframing Texas as a site of intellectual and creative production, the exhibition draws attention to the capacity of contemporary art to contest assumptions, foster connection, and articulate possibilities emerging from within the region itself.

– Phillip A. Townsend, Curator