Front Gallery
Art League Houston (ALH) is proud to present One by One, an exhibition of recent paintings by Nacogdoches based Artist Arely Morales. This exhibition, featuring five recent paintings by Morales, explores her personal experiences as an immigrant. These monumental paintings visually portray the grace and humanity of immigrant workers with a religious-like aura, inviting viewers to engage with her subjects in a highly personal, emblematic and humanitarian way.
“My personal life experiences play a major role in my artwork,” states Morales. “Who I am and where I came from. I was born in Mexico and lived there until I was fourteen years old. At that time, I moved to the United States and I went through the experience of merging into a new culture. I often felt displaced, undervalued, invisible, and even faced discrimination in my school and in the community. I also witnessed others in my community go through the same thing. I became part of a minority group that in today’s political climate is targeted with negativity. This issue has not only caused fear amongst us, but it has caused discrimination and has continued to devalue us as human beings. We are perceived as invaders, or worse, have become invisible.”
Morales is interested in exploring issues of identity, humanity, invisibility and the vulnerabilities that take place within immigrant workers. Class-based exploitation, physical and emotional sufferings, and a sense of invisibility and general degradation are some of the issues that they are currently confronted with in the United States. Farm workers, day laborers and housekeepers are frequent subjects in her paintings, and are often close friends or family members.
Morales states, “As part of the process of creating my paintings, I talk to them about their experiences of moving to this country and their challenges of being an immigrant worker. In some occasions, I also go with my models to their jobs. As they go through their daily tasks I talk to them and I observe their body language. Through larger-than life portraits, I seek to bring focus to their lives. The slightest gesture in a person’s face, hands or posture can tell so much about the situation that we are in and how we feel physically and emotionally. I share with the viewer aspects of our lives that make us human that often are unseen, from the sweat in our face, blood from an injured hand, to a posture suggesting how tired we are after long shifts. In some of my pieces I also seek to bring elements that speak about our culture, such as vibrant colors or patterns from indigenous groups in my home state.”
The hard work that these individuals do on a daily basis mostly remains unseen and unappreciated. Morales seeks to bring light to these issues and to create a clarity that makes her subjects feel visible and present in this world.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Arely Morales was born in Mexico and moved to Texas at the age of 14. She received her BFA in Painting and Photography from Stephen F. Austin State University in 2015, and later received her MFA from the University of Washington in 2017, where she was awarded the de Cillia Graduating with Excellence Award for her research and artwork.
Currently Morales is teaching drawing as an adjunct professor at Stephen F. Austin State University. She is a 2019 recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation grant. The experience of merging into a new culture and being an immigrant in this country has influenced the subject matter of her work, which focuses on issues of identity, displacement, humanity and the invisibility that immigrant workers face through classbased exploitation, physical and emotional sufferings, and their vulnerability. Through her artwork that features portraits of immigrant laborers, viewers are offered the opportunity to recognize her subject’s strength and humanity. Her work was featured in a two-person exhibition, Displaced, with Artist Shaun Roberts at Kirk Hopper Fine Art, Dallas, in the spring of 2019. Her solo exhibition at Art League Houston is the Artist’sfirst time to exhibit in Houston.