Native Texan Anne Wallace gathers material from her immediate surroundings and recontexualizes it in community-based projects, videos, sculpture, and sound pieces that fuse personal and collective issues. Through sidewalk panels that reveal the past, a video of abandoned oil on the family ranch, or a sculpture made out of salvaged trees, Wallace connects mythology and history with present realities, and questions the individual’s role within the environment.
While Wallace has used video and sound to evoke place, in the 1980s/90s she produced a body of works with wood. The artist re-presented damaged trunks to highlight people’s affect on nature, but also to explore the raw realities of those on the U.S./Mexico border. As a human rights advocate living along the frontera for a decade, she imaged refugee’s stories through drawings and carvings. In Amando en Tiempo de Guerra (1989-91) a group of roughly hewn, life-size figures lament the fallen. Intermingled with smooth patches of wood are painful chainsaw marks signifying both physical and psychological injuries. This installation, like Wallace’s others in wood, sound, and video, empathetically explores an issue intimate to the artist and of broad social concern.
Anne Wallace received her BA from Duke University, Durham, NC in 1976. Solo shows include Galveston Arts Center, TX (2002); Sala Diaz, San Antonio, TX (2001); and Orchard Gallery, Derry, Northern Ireland (1992). Recent group exhibitions include Latino Redux, University of North Texas Art Gallery, Denton, TX and Texas Dialogues: Scenic Overlook, Blue Star Art Space, San Antonio, TX, both in 2000. Wallace lives in San Antonio, TX.