Anthony Romero with Deanna Ledezma and Josh Rios. On view in 0102 BVAC, Black Family Visual Arts Center, January 6 – April 26, 2026.
The title of this exhibition, Not So Much in Words: Kinship Citations, borrows from a phrase spoken by Josh Rios's uncle, David Garcia, during a visit to the Smiley Latin American Cemetery in rural Texas. While tending the cemetery grounds, Garcia paused the revving motor of a weed eater to speak with his nephew. As he approached the gravestones, he gestured toward the names inscribed in granite, imparting his knowledge of the genealogical connections among relatives buried at the cemetery. Their conversation then turned from the factual aspects of family trees to the lesser discussed conditions of their Mexican ancestors' lives under the specter of racialized violence. As Garcia recounted these anecdotes, he acknowledged how he came to know these and other stories: "Grandpa would always tell us...not so much in words."
Collaborating as the Place as Practice Research Collective, artists and scholars Deanna Ledezma, Josh Rios, and Anthony Romero examine the narratives and histories of their Mexican American and Mexican immigrant families in the Texas Hill Country and South Central Texas. As descendants of families who primarily spoke Spanish, faced socioeconomic barriers to formal education, and migrated from their ancestral homeland, the collective recognizes the written and spoken word as but one modality for acquiring, demonstrating, and sharing knowledge across generations and diasporas. Together, they endeavor to gain a deeper appreciation for how their relatives have conveyed their Iived experiences, shared memories, and engaged in creative practices. Their attention requires an attunement to the quiet and the quotidian, and a return to places familiar yet susceptible to change and loss. The sculptures, video installation, and photographs in this exhibition belong to an ever-growing archive of kinship citations.
BIOGRAPHIES
Place as Practice Research Collective: www.placeaspractice.com
Deanna Ledezma is a Tejanx scholar, writer, and educator specializing in contemporary Latinx art and photography. She holds a Ph.D. in Art History and senres as the Postdoctoral Research Associate and Writing Lab Director of the Crossing Latinidades Humanities Research Initiative. She is also a Lecturer in the Departments of Art History, Theory, and Criticism and Liberal Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In collaboration with Josh Rios and Anthony Romero, she co-founded the Place as Practice Research Collective. Their inaugural exhibition, The place where the creek goes underground, was held at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute in 2024. Her current book project is Unsettled Archives: Kinships and Diasporas in Latinx Photography.
Forthcoming publications include essays in Carmen Lomas Garza: Picturing the Familiar (2026), Chicano Camera Culture: A Photographic History, 1066 to 2026 (2026), Sophie Rivera: Double Exposures (2026), and Feminist Visual Solidarities and Kinships (2026). For more information, visit her website at www.deannaledezma.com.
Josh Rios is faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he teaches courses in social theory and research-based practice. As an artist, writer, and educator, his work examines the histories, presents, and futurities of Latinx subjectivity and hemispheric resistance to globalization and neoliberalism. In collaboration with Anthony Romero and Matt Joynt, Rios co-founded Sonic Insurgency Research Group, whose multimedia works have been exhibited at the Vincent Price Art Museum (Los Angeles), the Counterpublic Triennial at Luminary Arts (St. Louis), and for Creative Times Headguarters' year-long thematic inquiry, The Sonic Commons. Publications include "Photographs from the Fields: The Digital Activism of the United Farm Workers," co-written with Deanna Ledezma for Reworking Labor (2023), "Sonic Legal Spaces: An Essay of Overdubs," co-authored with Romero and Joynt, for Columbia University's Academic Commons (2023), and "Mythic Sonic Beings: A Multitrack Conversation" in Situated Listening: Attending to the Unheard (Routledge, 2025).
Anthony Romero is an artist, writer, and cultural organizer. He is an Assistant Professor of Studio Art at Dartmouth College and earned his M.F.A. in Performance from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is a founding member of Sonic Insurgency Research Group and the Place as Practice Research Collective. Romero's collective works have been exhibited at the Vincent Price Art Museum (Los Angeles), the Counterpublic Triennial at Luminary Arts (St. Louis), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville, AR), Pulitzer Arts Foundation (St. Louis), and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. Romero co-edited the book Lastgaspism: Art and Survival in the Age of the Pandemic with Daniel Tucker and Dan S. Wang (Soberscove
Press, 2022). Essays include "La Vivienda es La Cura: Latinx Art, Politics, and Housing Justice in East Boston" in The Routledge Companion to Art and Activisim in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Mey-Yen Moriuchi and Lesley Shipley (2023), and "Sonic Legal Spaces: An Essay of Overdubs," co-authored with Rios and Joynt, for Columbia University's Academic Commons (2023).