Vicente Telles: Cobijas de Mis Madres

New Mexico-born artist Vicente Telles’ work opens dialogs about the complexities of contemporary New Mexican identities. He paints retablos that reinterpret traditional Catholic and cultural iconography, and experiments with media including textiles, high quality papers and found and repurposed materials.  Telles’ series of “anonymous self-portraits” for his upcoming show at Hecho Gallery depict him with a series of different vintage pinto bean sacks covering his head, and quilts wrapped around his shoulders that his grandmothers made “years and years ago.” The idea for self-portraits with pinto bean sacks builds on themes Telles has addressed in his previous work: “The idea of Nuevo Mexicanos and the broader Latino or Mexicano community here in the Southwest and parts of the United States being called ‘beaners’ and just being faceless, but still understood as being something different.”  To Telles, the image of the bean sack covering his face is an indication of the derogatory legacy of the term: “It's a universal self-portrait for male Latinos across this country. That term is something that's still very alive.”  But the image of the bean sack is also deeply layered. While it connotes the reduction of Latino and Mexicano communities to a faceless monolith, beans are also a fundamental source of nourishment, both physical and emotional. “It’s a meal that can sustain a family, can sustain a party. It's a positive in the communities we come from,” Telles says. He’s been hunting down vintage pinto bean sacks “that tell a story in their own right;” their different logos creating a narrative that explores the complexities of that image. Some of the vintage sacks he’s used show “old tropes, like the Mexican sleeping with their head tilted down or the banjo player.” Another is commodity beans, which Telles uses to start a dialogue about the stigma around SNAP benefits and food insecurity, even as perpetuated by people who may have accessed those services themselves as children: “People who are against providing for and helping those who are less fortunate now that they're in a better place. But that’s bullshit.”  The quilts Telles shows in his paintings are another integral part of the narrative. They were made by his grandmothers, and are layered in symbolism.  “The fabric culture in New Mexico goes way, way, way back,” Telles says. “It's also the idea of the warmth, the meals, the love, everything my grandmas provided.” In the self-portraits, the quilts are wrapped around the artist’s shoulders, evoking the finery worn by kings and queens of Europe and Mexico in regal portraits. While the quilts he’s painted may be worn with age in real life, Telles honors his grandmothers’ artistry through his own medium.   Doing justice to his grandmothers’ textile artistry hasn’t been an easy feat, and it has given Telles a new appreciation of the care that went into their construction. “Every piece of these quilts is its own little painting,” Telles says, recalling the challenge of conveying the textures, patterns, drapes and contrasts of the different pieces of fabric that come together in one quilt. “As I'm painting these pieces I'm like, ‘Oh, okay, I see what my grandma was doing—her design influences. It made me have even more of an appreciation for my grandmothers: not only were they doing this for their children and grandchildren, but they're also turning it into something of their own. It's something of pride for themselves.” While this show revisits motifs and themes Telles has explored before, it’s more complex and on a larger scale. It “rounds out a story of the idea of being a Nuevo Mexicano or a Latino in this part of the country,” Telles says. As his art has evolved, he’s begun to feel more comfortable “telling these stories that may seem insignificant, but in the grand scheme everybody can relate to.” “I think it's feeling more comfort in my ability to put it down and paint like I view it,” he says. “It's something to make people think that we're all human.” Cobijas de Mis Madres will open at Hecho Gallery on Friday, November 3 and will be on view until November 27.