September 18 – October 21, 2010
Upstairs BOX

Techno Cumbia

Debra Barrera and Lauren Moya Ford

Techno Cumbia features new work by Debra Barrera and Lauren Moya Ford.  The suites of drawings and installation center around identity, family, assimilation, humor, and word play.

Ford’s “Histories” explores the contrast between memory and history, between feelings and facts. Each piece is a narrative based around a man torn between two places, whether physical or societal. Race is the often the element that forces the point of action in the pieces. “Quartets” is a series based on word play and humor. The implications of each piece shift when read as a whole or as duets. The text in these drawings requires a different mode of viewing: reading. The interplay between expectations and incongruities that come from the experience of written material compared to purely visual material motivates both sets of work.

With sculpture and text Debra Barrera finds a way for Momento Mori to coincide with nonchalance by referencing personal history and slight humor. In Barrera’s installation “Don’t Worry, My Spanish Isn’t That Great Either” she pays tribute to her past in an extremely personal way. Including the exact replica of the Selena Memorial created by her father, Debra Barrera pays tribute to memories of both her hometown and her family. In her small text drawings, poetry finds a balance between romance and humorous detachment while dealing with the issues of growing up in an assimilated household.

Lauren Moya Ford was born in Boca Raton, Florida in 1986. She currently lives and works in Houston, Texas. In 2008 she received an MA and BFA from the University of Texas at Austin. Lauren is interested in exploring the implications of merging text with image making. Humor, memory, and semantics inform her suites of drawings and paintings that flit between ambiguity and transparency. Her work has been shown in Austin, San Antonio, and Houston at the Creative Research Laboratory, the New Gallery, The Joanna, and The Joannex.

Debra Barrera was born in Corpus Christi, Texas in 1984 and currently lives and works in Houston, Texas. She recently received a Master’s of Fine Arts in Studio Art from the University of Houston in 2010 and in 2006 she received a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts and a Bachelor’s of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. Graduating with degrees focused in studio art and creative writing,  Debra has been working to bridge a gap between poetry and the visual arts. Her work often emphasizes the metamorphic capacity a visual object can take on in the conceptual constructs of poetics. Working in painting, drawing, and sculpture, Debra has been shown in both Houston and Austin Texas at DARKE Gallery, Sally Sprout Gallery, Rice Media Gallery, The Joannex, Diverseworks, PG Contemporary Gallery, CRL Gallery, and the Blaffer Gallery.