From Texas censorship to UCSC: Silenced anti-ICE art exhibition celebrating dual identity finds a home in Santa Cruz

When two Texas institutions shut down Victor “Marka27” Quiñonez’s latest exhibition, the Mexican-born, Texas-raised artist took his work where it was welcome. This September, UC Santa Cruz’s Institute of the Arts and Sciences will host “Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá,” a multimedia exploration of dual identity and resilience in the immigrant experience. 

“There’s a red thread throughout the whole exhibition that is defined by dual identity,” Quiñonez said. “The exhibition has moments of joy, it has moments of sadness, it has moments of struggle and resilience. But ultimately, it celebrates life and culture.”

All of the artworks in his exhibition come together to speak to its audience, he said, mentioning two pieces in particular that had great personal meaning. The first is his immersive installation that transforms its galleries into a reimagined botánica, which are little stores throughout the East and West Coasts where people go for plants, herbs, candles and other cultural and spiritual items. What Quiñonez has always liked about botánicas, he said, is that they speak to a large group of people who are in search of hope and having their faith strengthened or renewed. 

The second piece he mentioned is a series of colorful Mexican paleta, or ice cream popsicle sculptures, he made out of resin. Titled “I.C.E. Scream,” the series includes three big paletas that have objects encapsulated inside of them – one with handcuffs, another with a rosary and a third with handguns. They all have an engraving on the paleta’s wooden stick of Quiñonez’s version of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security logo, which he changed to read “Stolen Land Security.” 

There are also a series of ice cream cities he made out of acrylic that are illuminated with LED lights, and they have laser-etched engravings of undocumented workers and street vendors on the paletas, which he said are meant to “illuminate people that have to work within secrecy because they’re undocumented.”

In February, the University of North Texas in Denton pulled Quiñonez’s “Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá” exhibit after only two days of it being up on its campus, which has a 30% Latino student population, Quiñonez said. 

Based on information from public records requests, he added that it was later clear his “I.C.E. Scream” series was the installation the university had the biggest problem with. According to an article Quiñonez helped author in April with the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, leaked transcripts indicated that the university shut down his exhibition due to “the political and public response [and] scrutiny across the spectrum” related to “anti-ICE messaging.”

Quiñonez heard about his exhibition closure at UNT from students direct-messaging him on Instagram, asking why the gallery’s doors were shut and its windows covered in paper. Shortly after Quiñonez and the students began asking the university questions about the exhibition’s closure, Quiñonez said that the director at UNT sent him an “extremely vague” email saying they had decided to terminate their agreement. 

“I’m incredibly proud of the students at the University of North Texas,” Quiñonez said. “I’m proud of their ability to stand up for themselves, to stand up for their own rights and to know the difference between censorship and a university taking away their ability to create work that speaks their truth.”

The university never directly acknowledged why it took Quiñonez’s show down, he continued, but he speculated that officials probably feared losing donors or their jobs.

Rachel Nelson is the director of the Institute of Arts and Sciences at UCSC and the co-director of Visualizing Abolition, an artist-based initiative that reaches across prison borders. She also helped arrange for Quiñonez’s exhibit to come to Santa Cruz this September. Nelson said she’s been seeing a great tension over the past few years around immigration and what it means to different communities. This has then mixed with the fear within universities and art spaces surrounding the impacts of changing laws, policies and belief systems.

“So instead of waiting to see what the consequences are, there’s a lot of what we think of as preemptive censorship happening within organizations,” Nelson said. 

Shortly after UNT, there was another opportunity for Quiñonez to showcase his work, this time at the Dallas Contemporary museum. Officials there originally wanted his work from around May to August, but they ended up canceling the exhibition, he said. However, the reason why they pulled his contract was more difficult to narrow down, Quiñonez continued, because the museum was very careful with its words. 

Despite months of back-and-forth with these two Texas galleries, Quiñonez never gave up hope that his work was necessary and important.

“When opposition goes to extremes to silence the work that you’re doing, it just validates our collective strength in our ability to to speak from a lived experience, to be able to share with people a message that’s needed,” he said. “They speak about us as targets, as illegals, but they don’t like to use anything that can characterize us as humans, so that’s part of the reason that I think they went to the extreme of taking the exhibition down – because it did the opposite of what their narrative is.”

Quiñonez said he’s excited to bring his work to the West Coast next month, and that his partnership with the Institute of Arts and Sciences was organic and natural. It was made possible through a collaboration with the Center for Art and Advocacy and Visualizing Abolition, and he said that Nelson, among others, made a great impact on reaching out and really connecting with what the exhibition is about.

Nelson shared this enthusiasm, and said she was confident that UCSC was not in a situation where an exhibit like Quiñonez’s would be shut down after opening. 

“We’re a university, and universities are about places where we talk across different forms of knowing, different beliefs, different histories, and that’s about education. I also think art is an interesting place because it’s about perspectives,” Nelson said. “As a university, we welcome hard conversations; they are undertaken with respect and care for the people who are the most at-risk in them.”

When asked if any school officials could speak to Quiñonez’s exhibit and its recent controversy, a UCSC spokesperson said that campus leadership generally isn’t weighing in on what art exhibits the IAS brings in, and that it’s typically an IAS decision. Neither the vice chancellor for diversity, equity and inclusion nor the interim dean for the arts responded to Lookout’s requests for comment.

After finding out his artwork would be shown in California, Quiñonez said people told him the one thing Texas and California have in common is that a lot of college students are undocumented and first-generation, which is one reason why he is looking forward to it coming out West. UCSC is also a Hispanic-Serving Institution, which means at least 25% of the undergraduate student body is Hispanic.

“For me, it’s incredibly important to be showing work that’s closer to the border that speaks to a broad audience with Chicano roots, but also with Indigenous roots, and showing them to be proud, to not be afraid and to continue to advocate for each other,” Quiñonez said.

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