The McNay’s Artists Looking at Art (ALA) series celebrates the vitality of the San Antonio contemporary art community with an installation by Juan Escobedo.

Juan Carlos Escobedo explores his identity as a queer, brown, Mexican-American, who was raised in a low-socioeconomic community along the U.S.-Mexico border. Drawing from his upbringing in El Paso, Texas, his work addresses class and race shame that arises from living in a predominantly white structured environment that favors light-skinned individuals and middle- and upper-classes. This installation, conceived for the alcove in the McNay’s Frost Octagon, resembles a retail clothing display, complete with the artist’s designer logo tags. Miniature tableaux covering the clothing’s surfaces depict clear contrasts in residential architecture. Socioeconomic disparities are emphasized by the artist’s use of brown cardboard to create houses familiar in border communities in contrast to white houses inspired by historic and classical structures.