Fitch and Tavera, LA LUCHA SIGUE / The Struggle Continues

Banner Image: Untitled, Inkjet photograph. 64 x 48. 2025.

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A meeting of two veterans, survivors of a Latin American revolution in contemporary art, and two of our most celebrated local Latino artists. But this is not just another exhibition amongst friends, it promises to be a unique dialogue on identity and belonging to measure up how the art of two artists can still sustain us and steward change. Luis Fitch and Xavier Tavera share an equally strong mexicanidad, but have remarkably different styles and approaches to their work. Individually or collectively, they have never ceased to inspire the community through their decades-long artistic production and social practice. They fit and outfit any categorizations and predictions, their work continues to emerge after all these years.

LA LUCHA SIGUE / The Struggle Continues: A Two-Artist Exhibition by Luis Fitch & Xavier Tavera Art, Identity, and Belonging Across Parallel Lives at the Inez Greenberg Gallery of the Bloomington Center for the Arts could be described as a needed call to fight (llamado a luchar–nodding to Mexican luchadores) to reaffirm our true individual and communal identities amidst the distress and uncertainty of our times. Fitch and Tavera ask themselves the same enduring questions: Who are we?  Where do we belong? What do we carry with us? How do we remain whole while living between cultures? While these read like their own introspective questions, the invitation is for all of us to confront them too. Opting to pair their works in this exhibition –self-describing a parallel universe– their desired aim is that the art becomes the vehicle to help us all persevere. In their own words, “La lucha sigue—the struggle continues—not only as hardship, but as perseverance, creativity, community, and the enduring pursuit of belonging.”

 

Images: (Left) Someone Somewhere is Summertime. Oil, acrylic, and sand on Canvas. 36 x 48. 2016. (Right) Venus La Astronauta. Oil, acrylic, and sand on Canvas. 24 x 30 in. 2016.

 

One of the pairings is that of the painting Someone Somewhere in Summertime by Fitch alongside Untitled, a photograph by Tavera from his series Borderlands. Fitch’s quasi-avian figure in yellow tones interacts with a cactus and a chicken, one’s imagination is immediately transported to arid landscapes such as those of the U.S.-Mexico border.  Tavera’s image of a vehicle barrier (known as a Czech hedgehog) in front of a rugged mountain situates us in the Arizona borderlands. My personal takeaway of this pairing is a strange but simultaneous sense of dread and beauty, and what this represents to immigrants. While immediate parallels might not be obvious, it is easy to be quickly stirred by thoughts and feelings about migration, memory, place, belonging, and transformation. 

Fitch’s mixed media painting Venus La Astronauta from 2023 is paired with Tavera’s 2024 portrait of local Latine artist and collaborator Alondra Marisol Garza photographed as a cowgirl alien. When seen together, the images produce an immediate inquiry into the concept of the ‘alien’, of our sense of belonging and not belonging. One could say, Fitch’s unique stylization of his “Venus” figure adds to the subversion of classical Western figuration, while Tavera’s futuristic outer-space image of Alondra reclaims the metaphor of the cowboy, and tattoos the border directly onto the body. 

The aforementioned works are just two of thirty-four pairings curated by Fitch and Tavera. While the thematic scope of LA LUCHA SIGUE / The Struggle Continues seems ambitious (covering multiple themes such as immigration, the border, identity, memory, resilience, belonging, and the way we carry culture with us), the artwork choices and exhibition scheme bring it all together cohesively. 

 

Image: Untitled, Inkjet photograph. 23 x 30. 2016.

 

I have known of Luis’s work since the early nineties, and of Xavier’s since the mid-2000s. I discovered the vibrant images produced by Fitch for the Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) while reading La Prensa de Minnesota in 1997, the oldest Latino newspaper in Minnesota. In 2013, I came across Tavera’s La Calle, a remarkable compilation of portraits of three Latino groups: Cholos, transgender, and Punks. In 2021, the United States Postal Service released a series of stamps on the theme of the Day of the Dead designed by Luis Fitch, a year before those of Ojibwe landscape painter and sculptor George Morrison (1919-2000). That same year, Tavera created a billboard for George Floyd Square alongside Ojibwe artist Jim Denomie (1955-2022) and community organizer Seitu Jones. 

LA LUCHA SIGUE / The Struggle Continues: A Two-Artist Exhibition by Luis Fitch & Xavier Tavera Art, Identity, and Belonging Across Parallel Lives will be on display at the Inez Greenberg Gallery of Bloomington Center for the Arts from July 17 to August 30. Bloomington Center for the Arts is located at 1800 W Old Shakopee Rd in Bloomington.◼︎ 

For a deeper introduction to the lives and careers of Fitch, Tavera, and other seminal Minnesota-based Latino, Latina, and Latine artists, access an amended digital copy of Latin Art in Minnesota for free here (thanks Minitex). For an exclusive look at Fitch’s work from the last decade, check out The Art of Luis Fitch published by UNO BRANDING. Follow Luis Fitch on IG @luisfitch and Xavier Tavera @taveraxavier.