Sculpture Candidate Presentation: Vick Quezada

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | Vick Quezada, candidate for the full-time faculty position in sculpture, will present their work to the community in a public talk.

Queering the Archaeological
As a Latinx Mestizx two-spirit border artist, Vick Quezada (they/them) combines personal narrative, historical research, activism with a lens in critical theory to narrate the Mexica Indigenous past. In their sculpture and performance work they prioritize rasquache design; this practice is used by Chicanx artists who repurpose and stylize found objects into art.

Vick Quezada's research practice integrates literature and theory works in Transgender Studies, Queer Studies, Indigenous Studies, and Comparative Settler Colonial Studies. Such debates give Quezada frameworks to advance their thoughts. Additionally, they center their research on Pre Columbian Aztec spirituality. On further observation, the materiality of their work holds complex meanings, while linking the works to the earth, invoking issues of land rights, queer ecology and the interconnectivity between plants, animals, humans, and organisms that extend into the infinite.

Vick Quezada grew up in El Paso, Texas right where the United States and Juarez, Mexico border converge. Their career as an artist has been all but traditional, in the past they’ve worked for over 15 years in advocacy and activism for GLBTQ, immigrant farmworkers, homeless youth, and nonprofit organizations. These experiences combined with their identity as Latinx-Mestizx, first generation college student, transgender non-binary informs and energizes their art and pedagogical practices. They are currently a Yale Mellon Arts & Practitioner Fellow at the Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration and teach as a Visiting Lecturer in Sculpture at Mount Holyoke College. Quezada holds a BA from the University of Texas at El Paso and an MFA from UMASS Amherst.

To share feedback on this presentation, please email committee chair Donald Sherefkin.