San Antonio artist Victoria Suescum has long been fascinated with the paintings on the exterior walls of mom and pop shops in San Antonio, Mexico, and her native Panama. These hand-painted signs advertise the goods and services offered and represent a unique visual approach that combines Pop art, hybrid languages, and advertising traditions. Suescum’s acrylics on paper, created between 2012 and 2020, beautifully capture the colors, textures, scale, and forms of the wall paintings that inspired them. In addition to celebrating family-owned small businesses in minority communities, her work also documents these quickly vanishing works of folk art.
In addition to approximately 30 drawings, the exhibition also includes an informal interview with the artist in her studio as well as photographs of the shops where Suescum found her inspiration.
Folk Pop: Victoria Suescum’s Tienditas is organized for the McNay Art Museum by Lyle W. Williams, Curator of Collections.
This exhibition is a program of the Elizabeth Huth Coates Foundation of 1992.
