Divine Immanence
Divine Immanence
Apolo Gomez and Delilah Montoya
November 10 – December 30, 2023
Opening Reception: Friday, November 10 from 5-8 pm
Sanitary Tortilla Factory is proud to present Divine Immanence, a two-person exhibition that embarks on a profound exploration of identity, and spirituality through photographic works by Apolo Gomez and Delilah Montoya. This exhibition challenges preconceived notions of heaven, female archetypes, and the queer experience through photography.
Delilah Montoya’s “La Llorona in Lillith’s Gardens”is a mesmerizing photographic mural that reimagines two archetypal figures, Lillith and La Llorona. Traditionally portrayed as evil spirits, these women have been used to prescribe societal norms for women’s behavior. Montoya’s work provocatively challenges these traditional double standards, infusing these female archetypes with new and empowering meaning.
Gomez’s exploration of spirituality, body, and queerness, in his work creates a compelling dialogue with Montoya’s ability to challenge reimagine archetypal figures. Together, their works collectively challenge viewers to consider the multifaceted nature of identity.
Artist Bios:
Apolo Gomez was born in Austin, TX, and is a queer Chicanx visual artist based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Now in remission after overcoming a bout with lymphoma, Apolo started photographing and began capturing portraits of his friends and important people in his life. His interdisciplinary practice, encompassing photography and installation, explores themes of person hood, queerness, desire, loss, and their Latinx identity. Gomez’ work has been exhibited at notable venues including the Colorado Photographic Arts Center in Denver, CO, the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno, NV, and the National Hispanic Cultural Center Art Museum in Albuquerque, NM. His work has also been published in I-D magazine, Southwest Contemporary, and Elephant magazine. Gomez is represented by Kouri + Corrao Gallery in Santa Fe, NM, and currently serve as a Studio Assistant for artists Judy Chicago and Donald Woodman
Delilah Montoya is a self-identified Chicana artist, works and lives in New Mexico. As an activist artist, she poses herself questions about identity, power, land, borders, gender, community, family. She is an investigator of histories and lives; her primary subject is the human condition through time and territory as expressed through the lens of being a mestiza, a Chicana, someone who claims a hybrid identity. Delilah’s work is in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Los Angeles, CA; Houston Museum of Fine Art; Houston, TX; National Mexican Museum; Chicago, Ill.; The Bronx Museum, Bronx, NY; Albuquerque Museum and the Smithsonian Institute; Washington DC. Her awards include the USLAF Latinx Fellowship, Artadia Award and the Richard T. Castro Distinguished Professorship. She is a professor emerita from the University of Houston, College of the Arts.
Mobile Abolition Library
sheri crider in collaboration with FRONTERISTXS
The Mobile Abolition Library will house a collection of 300 books, zines, video portrait archive of incarcerated narratives and an abolition seed library. We are excited to partner with Book Works to community source the physical books for the library. In the spirit of generosity and abolition, we hope to have multiple copies of books to leave with readers and communities. Readers, bibliofiles and book lovers, world wide are encouraged to purchase the books for the traveling library. There are multiple other ways you can be involved. Please scroll to bottom of the page for more details on becoming a library funder or supporter of this project.
The library will be a site to reflect on ways we can re-imagine our current world of surveillance, policing, punishment, and care between communities. The Mobile Abolition Library will be housed in a Ford E-Transit designed and built out by a coalition of system impacted youth and adults coordinated by Art for Justice fellow sheri crider. The van will be an ongoing project in coordination with state wide exhibitions centered on criminal justice reform in 2026 at Site Santa Fe, University of New Mexico Art Museum and New Mexico State University Art Museum. Sanitary Tortilla Factory will additionally host Daniel McCarthy’s, Section of Disapproved Books (this exhibition highlights censored books in the prison system) in conjunction with this initiative.
The project is an ongoing collaboration between sheri crider and Bernadine Hernández, Apolo Gomez, Martín Wannam, and the members of FRONTERISTXS Collective. The project has an ambitious mission to visit key sites in New Mexico and the western US in the next three years. Several community and library spaces are confirmed for 2024 – South Valley Library, Columbus Village Library and the Santa Fe Public Library. It is also the projects intention to travel to rural Migrant Detention Sites and Jails and Prisons (Grants, Cibola, Otero, Las Cruces, amongst others) and organize pop ups in the communities most affected by mass incarceration.
New Mexico is significantly impacted by the prison and migrant detention industrial complex, with New Mexico incarcerating its people at a rate 18.7 percent higher than the national rate. New Mexico also relied heavily on private prisons more than any other state: 43 percent of people incarcerated in New Mexico are in private prisons, compared to the nationwide percentage of 8.5 percent. In 2017, 73 percent of all people in immigration detention facilities in New Mexico were confined to privately run facilities. While publicly run prisons are harsh and also problematic, New Mexico’s unique position with the private run facilities lack oversight, which makes conditions in these detentions, prisons and jails deplorable with more known health violations, exploitative labor conditions, physical abuse, higher use of solitary confinement, and more limited legal resources.
FUTURE LOCATION OF LIBRARY FUNDER LINK to purchase books for the library AND THE 300 BOOK LIST!!! PLEASE CHECK BACK SHORTLY !!!
Sandia Hot
Sandia Hot
Justin Favela in collaboration with Working Classroom
August 4 – 25, 2023
Opening Reception: Friday, August 4 from 5-8 pm
Sanitary Tortilla Factory is proud to present Sandia Hot, an immersive installation celebrating the historic Albuquerque Barelas Neighborhood and New Mexican history, born from the creative collaboration between Working Classroom and artist, Justin Favela.
For the past decade, Favela’s artistic journey has revolved around delving into the rich tapestry of Latinx culture and its profound influence on our contemporary society, especially through cherished culinary heritage. At the heart of Favela’s artistic exploration lies the profound connection between authenticity, place, and identity, beautifully expressed through the time-honored tradition of cartoneria.
While leading an exceptional two-week workshop at Working Classroom, Favela’s vision is to empower students to embark on a journey of research, discovering the local delicacies, restaurants, and the treasured family recipes that carry profound narratives. This exceptional workshop is dedicated to the vibrant Barelas neighborhood and the abundant history of New Mexico.
Throughout the engaging two weeks, Favela will impart the art of cartoneria to the students, guiding them in mastering techniques such as crafting cardboard structures, employing paper mache, and creating stunning piñatas alongside other mesmerizing paper artistry. Together, they will breathe life into colossal representations of significant New Mexican dishes, making them awe-inspiring focal points of an immersive installation that will be on view at Sanitary Tortilla Factory.
Join us Friday, August 4 from 5-8 pm for the opening reception of Sandia Hot, a celebration of community, culture, and artistic expression, as we come together to honor the spirit of Barelas neighborhood and the enduring essence of New Mexican history through the magical medium of cartoneria.
Artist Bio:
Justin Favela is based in Las Vegas, Nevada, and is known for large-scale installations and sculptures that manifest his interactions with American pop culture and the Latinx experience. Favela has exhibited his work both internationally and across the United States. His installations have been commissioned by museums including the Denver Art Museum in Colorado and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas. He is the recipient of the 2018 Alan Turing LGTBIQ Award for International Artist. Favela hosts two culture-oriented podcasts, Latinos Who Lunch and The Art People Podcast. He holds a BFA in fine art from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
WILD DESIRE
WILD DESIRE
Tommy Bruce and Mark Zubrovich
July 7 – 28, 2023
Opening Reception: Friday, July 7 from 5-8 pm
Sanitary Tortilla Factory is pleased to present WILD DESIRE, an exhibition of new painted works by artists Tommy Bruce and Mark Zubrovich. This show represents a collaboration years in the making. Both are artists concerned with queer identity and its manifestation within imagined bodies. Both artists pull directly from their experiences within the furry subculture, where these imagined bodies spring to life in drawing, costume, and roleplay. This exhibition explores the unique lens that such a perspective lends to concepts of desire, the self, and the fantastical other.
Bruce’s work, from the series “The Tiger in Me” responds to a mid 2010’s twitter feud between the official Kellogg’s cereal brand account @realtonytiger and the Furry twitter community at large. These works imagine a loving/lusting relationship between Tony the Tiger and Bruce’s fursona, Atmus, a white-tailed deer. Bruce considers this fantasy as a logical conclusion to the intensifying relationship between corporate brands and personal identity, as if to say “You want me to love your brand? Okay, let me show you how much I love it.”
Zubrovich’s work is a dive into new modes of self portraiture, spurred on by the artist’s body trauma after having their sense of smell damaged by COVID. Zubrovich’s new works explore the genesis and growth of Bruce the mutt, the artist’s shapeshifting hyper sensory dog fursona. When Mark cannot be human, Bruce lets him be doggie (or dog dressed as possum, or sentient pool toy, ect). Where Mark cannot sniff, Bruce does the sniffing for them.
Artists Bios:
Tommy Bruce (he/him) is an artist and photographer who has been making work with the Furry community for more than a decade. He received his MFA from UNM in 2020 and his BFA from MICA in 2014. He was named one of “12 New Mexico Artists to know” in 2021. He is currently based in Albuquerque, New Mexico but will be relocating to Portland, Oregon later this summer.
Mark Zubrovich (he/they) is a Brooklyn, New York based painter born on Long Island. They received their BFA from SUNY Purchase School of Art and Design in 2015, and have been making work about anthropomorphic dogs ever since. He has shown recently with Richard Heller Gallery, 1969 Gallery, and Moosey Art, and was most recently Artist In Residence at the Liquitex painting studios in New Jersey.
Diasporic Deities
Diasporic Deities
Esther Elia
February 3-24, 2023
Opening: February 3, 5-8 pm
Zuyakha/Celebration:
Saturday, February 4, 5:30
*Performance starts at 6:00 pm with traditional Assyrian food and dancing.
Sanitary Tortilla Factory is pleased to present Diasporic Deities by UNM College of Fine Art’s MFA Candidate and Exceptional Visual Art Scholar (EVAS) Awardee Esther Elia. EVAS is a series that offers professional space for Master of Fine Art graduate students as their final thesis show. The culminating exhibition launches them into their profession as an artist. With the series, we underscore exceptional artists attending regional institutions while highlighting Albuquerque’s innovative contemporary art scene.
If one were looking for an Assyrian, they are most easily found in the Met, the British Museum, and the Louvre, most likely correcting unwitting docents who casually referred to Assyrians in the past tense. The Assyrian Indigenous homeland is the intersection of modern-day Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq. Many years ago, museums were built to house the fantastic treasures of our monumental carved lamassu that were originally stationed outside of Assyrian cities like Nineveh. Unearthed bas reliefs that lined palace walls and portrayed the victories of the Assyrian kings Sargon, Sannacherib, and Ashurbanipal were taken from the land of their conception and transplanted, a sort of prophecy of what was to come for the Assyrian people themselves. These sculptures spoke to the Western imagination, a tale of the great kingdoms of the past, and created a folklore of a time and people they decided must be long gone.
So what of the living, breathing Assyrians? Today they are a religious and ethnic minority, survivors of multiple genocides throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, scattered across the world in tight-knit communities within their Indigenous homelands and diaspora.
This is the basis of the monumental sculptures and large-scale paintings shown in Esther Elia’s MFA Thesis Exhibition, Diasporic Deities. Through the use of material and the visual impacts of diaspora, Elia documents the next phase of the Assyrian identity. While ancient Assyrian art documented the deities that were born out of the Mesopotamian landscape, Elia imagines how these deities have shifted in diaspora. They take on new faces, new occupations – rooted in homeland, and yet evolving to reflect the needs of a generation exiled from their Indigenous home. These “new deities” also echo the fertility goddesses that we carried around with us in the past, their exaggerated features showing up in new ways with multiple limbs, muscles, and bodybuilder competition bikinis. In essence, our strength becomes exaggerated, for we are in less need of fertility and in more need of muscle. These grandchildren of our pantheon are portraits of our women stolen, and our nation’s fertility co-opted most recently by the ISIS invasions. These tiled structures stand strong, winged, multi-limbed, and muscular – the new protective deities for the contemporary Assyrian.
Artist Bio:
Esther Elia was born and raised in Turlock, California. She received a BFA in Illustration from California College of the Arts in 2019, and is currently finishing a Masters of Fine Arts in Painting/Drawing from the University of New Mexico. Her work focuses on the Assyrian experience, the maintaining and creation of culture in diaspora, and revitalizing Assyrian ritual practices through sculpture and large-scale paintings. She, along with other Assyrian visual artists, are working to combat the notion that Assyrian Art can and does only exist within the ancient past by collecting and displaying contemporary oral histories, painting living Assyrian faces, speaking and examining the Assyrian language, and documenting Assyrian culture as it continues to grow and shift both in our indigenous homeland and diaspora.
Her work has focused in the past on the refugee experience, and addresses more broadly the mindset that is obsessed with the pursuit of safety. In her new series of diasporic deities, she draws from the grid of the rug and cultural practices of tiling to create blocky sculptures that reference Afghan war rugs. Just as villages documented unfamiliar Soviet weapons of war in their kilims, so I too am combining the new with the old, my diasporic environment showing up and taking shape within ancient references. Esther’s work has been shown in the deYoung museum, she has done murals in Iraq and California Facebook offices, was accepted to participate in the 2022 Guggenheim Summer College Workshop, and has most recently won the 2022 Assyrian Academic Research Grant for her project The Assyrian Prayer Bowl Archive.