LES CHINGONES —

Les Chingones presents the distinct and diverse artistic expressions of Andrew Alba, Horacio Rodriguez, Kelly Tapia-Chuning, and Sara Serratos. Their practices, spanning from sculpture to painting, ceramic, textiles, photography, and mixed media, boldly confront, reclaim, and reimagine the cultural, political, and personal landscapes of the Latinx experience in the American West.

These artists embody the term chingón/chingona—a Spanish slang expression reclaimed to signify power, resistance, and excellence. In Latinx culture, 'chingón/chingona' is historically used to denote strength, resilience, and a rebellious spirit. Their work navigates a terrain shaped by colonization, migration, and generational memory. Les Chingones explores themes of identity, resilience, and transformation, often weaving humor, critique, and reverence into a complex visual language.

Rodriguez's ceramic sculptures remix Mesoamerican objects and iconography with street aesthetics and political commentary, creating a unique blend of traditional and contemporary elements. Alba's expressive paintings and sculptures channel working-class histories and familial legacies through bold brushstrokes and vibrant colors. Tapia-Chuning's fiber-based works unravel the tensions between assimilation and heritage, dismantling serapes as an act of decolonization and honoring her ancestors. Serratos's pieces invoke the domestic and the ritualistic as spaces of both vulnerability and power, often using found objects and mixed media to create a sense of intimacy and depth.

Together, their voices form a chorus—unapologetic, rooted, and chingón—as they carve out space for stories too often excluded in dominant art narratives. Les Chingones is an assertion of presence, a celebration of cultural hybridity, and a challenge to the systems that seek to contain it.

As a descendant of Mexican migrant workers, Alba often communicates anti-establishment narratives of the working class. Through abstraction and neo-expressionism, he evokes an emotional response while commenting on repeated histories, contemporary politics, society, family, and fatherhood. He creates work free from elite academic ideals, theoretical constraints or critical expectations.

Horacio Rodriguez is an artist, educator and curator originally from Houston, TX. Horacio is currently based in Salt Lake City and moved to Utah in 2016 via the Morales fellowship at the University of Utah. Since completing his fellowship, Horacio has shown his work extensively, including a residency and show at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Arts and the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Arts. Horacio's work is in the permanent collection of the State of Utah, Salt Lake County, Salt Lake Community College, and most recently was acquired for the permanent collection of the Utah Museum of Fine Arts.

Currently, Horacio is a Frontier Fellow out of Epicenter in Green River, Utah, and the co-onsite Liaison for the 59th Annual National Council on the Education of the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) conference in Salt Lake City, March, 2025.

Sara Serratos (b. Estado de México) is an interdisciplinary artist and art educator originally from Hidalgo, Mexico—on Ēxcān Tlahtōlōyān and Hñähñu territories— now based in Salt Lake City, Utah, on Timpanogos, Shoshone, Goshute, and Ute lands. She migrated to Utah at the age of 26, the same age her great-grandfather, a locomotive operator, was when he lost his life in a coal mine accident in what was once Rains, Utah. Sara’s art practice explores and addresses inhabitable spaces and the socio-environmental impact of architecture, particularly housing, landscapes, language, social constructs, cultural shock, and migration. Her artwork is informed by a sociological and decolonial perspective, rooted in her personal experiences. Engaging with various media, including film, digital and analog photography, video, sculpture, performance, text, and painting, Serratos has created two cohesive bodies of work “Madrigueras de Cemento” (2015-2017) and “Who Sustains Our Tables?” (2022-2025) that challenge and inspire dialogue. Her artwork has been featured in solo and group exhibitions in the United States, Mexico, and online. In 2024, she was awarded an Artist Residency at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, where she is currently developing a new body of work.

Serratos holds an MFA in Photography and Digital Imaging from the University of Utah (2023) and a BFA from the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado “La Esmeralda” (2017), where she graduated with honors. She was a recipient of the Support Program for Cultural and Art Professionals for Postgraduate Studies Abroad (2021–2023), awarded by the National Council for Culture and Arts of Mexico and the National Council of Humanities, Sciences, and Technologies of Mexico. Currently, she serves as Exhibitions and Education Director at Bountiful Davis Art Center and as an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Art & Art History at the University of Utah.

Kelly Tapìa-Chuning (b. 1997) is a mixed-race Chicana artist of Indigenous descent from southern Utah currently based in Detroit, MI. In 2020, she received a BFA in Studio Arts from Southern Utah University; and is pursuing an MFA in Fiber at Cranbrook Academy of Art, where she was awarded a Gilbert Fellowship. Tapìa-Chuning's work has been included in exhibitions with the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, GAVLAK (LA), Onna House (East Hampton), The Border Project Space (NY), and solo exhibitions with Red Arrow Gallery (TN) and Harsh Collective (NYC). Her work has been featured in Artnet News, Southwest Contemporary, Surface Mag, Juxtapose Art & Culture Magazine, Artsin Square, and Friend of The Artist. Tapìa-Chuning's work is in numerous private collections across the US and in public collections at Onna House in East Hampton, NY and the Southern Utah Museum of Art.