Meet Jesus Treviño | Artist, Art Organizer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jesus Treviño and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jesus, how has your background shaped the person you are today?
I’m from Brownsville, a city on the southern border of Texas. Growing up I picked up on a general pessimism about being from there. I was being told I needed to leave, that the city is a dead end, and that staying means you’re stuck in a situation you don’t want to be in. Because region/ location is intrinsically tied to heritage and sense of self, that dismissal of place translated into a denial of cultural identity. In my formative years, I was absorbing negative feelings and connotations about being Mexican. That in combination with being disconnected from family, led to an active rejection of who I was. Being American meant success, comfort, and security, and to be American, in my narrow world view, meant you don’t speak Spanish, don’t listen to “rancherito music”, etc. I now recognize these rejective actions and feelings as a response to acts of survival, but it took me leaving to grad school in Austin, Texas to gain the perspective I needed to start fully appreciating where I come from. Like so many people, I arrived at the desire to reconnect after my youthful cultural denunciation, and visual art has been my vehicle to do that. I’m an artist, and my art practice involves collecting and making artifacts from my journey of healing and relearning. From these experiences, I’ve recognized the importance of art to a community. It allows us to share our experiences, inspire self-reflection, new ways of thinking, and to learn from each other. Not everyone has the privilege to leave like I did, so my focus lately has been on an art nonprofit I founded called “Frontera Arts in Bloom” and an artist-in-residency program called the “Flower Shop Art Residency”. My goal is to find ways to facilitate growth, healing, and life enrichment through art in the way that I have begun to.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I’ve been fortunate to have incredible people guide me through shared knowledge and experience, which has allowed me to shape my art practice to what it is now. They’ve given me the confidence to be dedicated and ambitious with what I make and I’m just trying to do my best at taking advantage of incredible opportunities that come my way. Rooted from my experience being raised on the U.S./Mexican borderlands, My work deals with loss and the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. I’m interested in land’s capacity to hold traces of unresolved tensions when thinking about histories of movement, displacement of people, and how that shapes my identity which continues to shift, fade, and reassemble.
Using disruption, concealment and layering, my practice allows for an unfolding and discovery of stories that resist being buried beneath the surface of unstable and agitated paintings. I work from a bank of collected images found in family photo albums, social media profiles, personal archives, and articles about the border. These moments are usually painted but then I like to experiment with different tools and techniques to affect the image in a way that speaks to my desire to rediscover histories and the importance of keeping them alive.
Materially, I’ve started utilizing used motor oil that I’ve collected from my uncle’s used car dealership near the international bridge in Brownsville. When I make paintings with that material, I’m excited by the idea that they are composed of and actively affected by a history of movement in the same way I’ve been. It’s almost like blood of a vehicle, containing DNA of its past, allowing forward progression.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
In October 2023, I hosted the first cycle of my artist-in-residence program. A big part of that was scheduling field trips around town to enjoy what Brownsville has to offer. For coffee, 7th and Park is a coffee shop with a really nice vibe that doubles as a bicycle repair shop. That area that it’s in is called the Mitte Cultural District which has the Brownsville Fine Arts Museum, Dean Porter Zoo and Park, our community theater the Camille Playhouse and more. 77 Flea Market is a must. We have a South Padre Island nearby to enjoy the beach with a growing number of art gallery spaces. We also have a pretty lively nightlife in downtown with bar crawls, artisan markets, and a good number of cultural art performances.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Shout out to loved ones and every person who has shared their wisdom and time with me. I continue to be molded by your love and support.

“Para Mis Abuelitos
Con Todo Cariño
Tu Nieto,
Jesus”

Website: jesustrevinoart.com

Instagram: @jesustrevinoart

Other: @flowershopartstudio

Image Credits
All images curtesy of the artist.