The boy

Rudy Herrera

Exhibition: Jan 12 – Apr 30, 2023


Rudy Herrera often works on large-scale, colorful artworks that are intended to reach a broad audience – in particular to reach his peers who don’t naturally gravitate to art museums, galleries, and other curated spaces. “Utilizing spray paint and acrylic, Herrera communicates with his first and most important audience, his contemporaries and peers.”

In his Artpace exhibition, Herrera explores his ancestry and, more specifically, the men in his family. Utilizing laminated aluminum, foam, wood, and acrylic, the artist has created a scene that depicts multiple generations of men in his family. One of the displays includes a man pushing a shopping cart with a boy sitting inside it. The man pushing the cart is Rudy in the present, while the boy in the cart represents Rudy’s son and all the men that raised him.

The entire scene is a story about the artist’s family, and although he doesn’t know much about the men that came before him, he sees himself as an accumulation of all of them. This installation is a self-reflective exhibition that explores the erasure of Native history and contemporary contemplations of family. Herrera told Artpace, “I want the boy in the shopping cart to see that he is the best and worst bits of all the Herreras that came before him, and he will lift off to become his own Herrera with the guardianship of his ancestors.”

Artist

Rudy Herrera

San Antonio, Texas, USA

Rudy Marco Herrera was born in El Paso Texas in 1985. His family is of Native Tigua descent, and he spent his youth in El Paso and the surrounding area. At the age of nine, Rudy and his family made San Antonio their new home. The transition to a new city was not smooth, but he would later come to embrace his home, as it was the first time that a structured and stable home life was available. Rudy found a family in San Antonio and would later start one of his own. He left San Antonio briefly to go to school in Houston but came back wanting to be one of the many success stories that inspired him. All the while, Rudy continued his artistic practice despite the dips in financial stability. Today Rudy pushes himself in his artistic endeavors and makes the city he loves proud. 

Herrera’s public art works can be found throughout San Antonio – on the east side at the Southwest Workers Union building, on the Westside in projects with San Antonio Cultural Arts, downtown at restaurants and event centers and most recently with the Art Everywhere mural project on the historic Kress building.

See More

Related
Exhibitions

View