Nicolas V. Sanchez: belongings

May 5 - July 23, 2022

Mexican-American artist Nicolas V. Sanchez’s sense of belonging transcends geopolitical borders. His artistic vision expresses the nuances of longing for family, land, culture, place, and time that is intimately familiar to diverse diasporic peoples, but universally human.

Sanchez explores “belonging” as a familial, cultural, ancestral, historical, and geographic experience. “Belonging to” is always in relation with an enduring sense of to “be longing” for connections that transcend singular explanation.

In belongings, scenes of family domesticity, cultural figures, and pastoral spaces are extrapolated from memory and imagination.

Sanchez is a preeminent Mexican-American artist of his generation. Working in contemporary figuration referring to historic tradition, we might also consider his belonging within the art canon. Institutions with heightened awareness of diverse identities and global stories still underrepresent Latinx artists, while also underpinning narrow subject matter focused on buzz-worthy events. Amidst this climate, Sanchez asserts a more personal narrative as a path toward celebrating unique cultural nuances that reveal the universal desires to belong to one another.

In loving memory of Raúl Sanchez.