Rummaging through the collective North American imagination, Alejandro Abarca’s film and installation works revive archetypes like the cowboy, saint, and priest invoking acid Westerns of yesteryear. Underlying the canonical references are those that read history against the grain by centering Mexican American icons, alluding to the complexities of borderland identities in the American southwest, particularly in Texas, where Abarca is from. There is no easy or fixed sense of being but rather a disorienting collage of icons from which Abarca draws his inspiration.

By Noelle Théard