About the work

Titled “Cuilapam de Guerrero,” this drawing is organically related to several bodies of work that explore the materiality of metals and tools traditionally used in jewelry, as well as the history of geological representations. The title of the piece refers to the town of Alfonso Vargas Sánchez, my maternal grandfather, who was a beekeeper and goldsmith who dedicated himself to reproducing archaeological jewelry for history museums in Mexico and for the growing and contradictory tourist market in the Mexican state of Oaxaca.

Date and country of birth

1982, MX

Career Highlights

Saúl Hernández-Vargas is an interdisciplinary artist. Recently, he has exhibited and performed in the Houston Climate Justice Museum (US), the Contemporary Art Museum of Houston (US), and the Lawndale Art Center (US). He has exhibited collectively at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (US) and Cooper Cole gallery (Canada). He has been an artist in residence at the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands (Arizona State University) and the Core Program at the Museum of Fine Arts of Houston. His work has been discussed in The Tyranny of Common Sense by Irmgard Emmelhainz (Sunny Press, 2021).