Check out our artist collabs in support of TALA

Texas Biennial 2024

Community Spotlights
Texas Biennial 2024

Emerging Voices and Texas Talent.

The Texas Biennial, founded in 2005 by Austin nonprofit Big Medium, is the longest-running state biennial in the U.S., showcasing the diversity of contemporary art in Texas. With now over 300 artists, it continues to provide a platform for Texas-based artists, including those with deep ties to the state. Independent and curator-driven, the Biennial partners with venues statewide and is supported by the City of Austin, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Texas Commission on the Arts. Through exhibiting and programming, it remains a vital force in Texas’s contemporary art community.

The Texas Biennial is a great platform for discovering emerging talent, often introducing us to artists we weren’t previously aware of. With its use of young curators and focus on fresh perspectives, it creates an environment where new voices can thrive. Here are a few artists we discovered through the Biennial that we’re keeping a close eye on.

Hollis Hammonds

Hollis Hammonds creates dystopian drawings and found-object installations that explore memory, social issues, and environmental degradation. Her multimedia work connects personal narratives to broader themes of economic disparity, state violence, and human-made disasters. She also collaborates on projects addressing climate grief, making visible individual contributions to climate change.

Hollis Hammonds. Photo by Philip Rogers.
Hollis Hammonds, Distant Past, Distant Future, 2024.

Carlos Rosales-Silva

Carlos Rosales-Silva’s practice explores the intersections of language and culture in the American Southwest, Western art history, and border politics. His work, rooted in drawing, often turns into collages and shaped paintings influenced by architecture and landscapes. Rosales-Silva’s practice is deeply connected to his borderland heritage, exploring identity and place through abstraction.

Carlos Rosales-Silva in his studio.

Krista Leigh Steinke

Krista Leigh Steinke is an interdisciplinary artist whose work merges experimental photography, installation, and collage to reflect on time, perception, and the natural world. Using unconventional techniques like pinhole cameras and homemade filters, she explores how nature impacts the human experience. Her work often addresses themes from star maps to environmental crises.

Krista Leigh Steinke at exhibition. Photo by Karen Hillier.
Krista Leigh Steinke, Pete Comet, 2024. Film still. Click here to view her moving images.

Kaima Marie Akarue

Kaima Marie Akarue’s collage-based work examines identity through urbanism, capitalism, and historical narratives, blending personal experience with collective memory. Layering space, time, and memory, she challenges existing histories and reimagines the past. Marie’s work intends to highlight overlooked moments and cultural intersections.

Kaima Marie Akarue in her studio.
Kaima Marie, If it were up to me, I would choose the blue house, 2024.

Guadalupe Hernandez

Guadalupe Hernandez explores themes of family, labor, and cultural traditions through painting and Papel Picado-inspired cut paper works. His practice deeply engages with Mexican heritage, preserving and reinterpreting traditional folk art. Through detailed craftsmanship, his work honors intergenerational storytelling and shared cultural memory.

Guadalupe Hernandez with his Con Cariño works. Photo by Jakayla Monay.

Beatriz Bellorín

Beatriz Bellorin is a Venezuelan-American artist and documentary filmmaker whose work is rooted in memory, displacement, and identity. Through archival materials and photography, her large-scale collages challenge linear narratives, exploring overlooked histories and the emotional weight of migration. 

Beatriz Bellorín with an art piece. Photo courtesy of Ramona Residency.
Beatriz Bellorín, Latitude and Longitude exhibition.

Liza Zaldívar Salazar

Liza Zaldivar explores Latinx-American identity and cultural resilience through visual art and design. She has painted murals in memory of migrants who died crossing the border and incorporates recycled materials into her work as a commentary on consumption and displacement, including transforming fast fashion waste into statements on oppression and hope. Her practice bridges activism and artistic expression, examining migration and the impact of U.S. consumerism on Latin American communities.

Liza Zaldivar in the studio.

The Texas Biennial not only celebrates the state’s rich artistic diversity but also invites reflection on the relationship between art and identity. To explore the dynamic work of Texas Biennial artists, click here to view the current exhibitions.