Celeste De Luna

Celeste De Luna is a printmaker from the lower Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. “A true daughter of the borderlands, her art celebrates the quotidian and the exceptional on the border,” writes Ines Hernandez-Avila. Her work seeks to articulate and dismantle oppressive structures in the material, spiritual, and supernatural world. Rooted in a Chicana feminist perspective, she seeks to tease out the intricacies of living in and along the borderlands in her art. Frequent motifs in her work include imagery depicting migration, such as barbed wire, fences, bridges, and anchors, and emphasize the experiences of non-white borderland people.

De Luna is a self-taught printmaker whose work includes large-scale woodcut prints and installation. De Luna is a cofounder of the socially engaged art collective Las Imaginistas, owner of Metztli Press, and will be a June 2021 Vermont Studio Resident artist. The print “Necrocitizen” was recently featured on the cover of book “Fencing in Democracy” by Miguel Diaz-Barriga and Margaret Dorsey and published by Duke Press. Currently, De Luna lives in San Antonio, Texas with her family and works out of her home studio, Metzli Press, where she is working on her BorderLand X-scapes series.

Residency/Fellowship

Equal Justice 2017/2018

Website

celestedeluna.com

Location

Harlingen, TX USA

STRUGGLES & HOPES / ALUMNI STATEMENT

Sadly I am feeling unfazed over the current moment, and instead frustrated over America’s shocked reactions about police militarization extending to the interior of the United States. This has long been the status quo in my border community since 9/11.  Border artists and communities have been sounding this alarm for almost 20 years. My struggle as a brown woman artist from the militarized border is having people interpret my story and artwork, through their own lens and for their own purposes. My hope is to have a voice that is acknowledged and respected and to be able to communicate in ways that are harmonious with traditional cultural life ways and distinctly not Anglo-American. –Celeste De Luna

SFAI140 Video Presentation

Play Video