Into the Thick of IT!


April 6 — May 4, 2024
Opening night: April 6th, 6-9pm
With Lynny’s open late
Drinks by Marfa Spirit Co
Music by Chulita Vinyl Club

Mass Gallery is proud to announce Into the Thick of IT, a group of five transdisciplinary artists that explore the movement of queer bodies across ecological and psychological borders, offering a raw portrayal of immersion in the environment, boundary-crossing, and confronting life's complexities within our ecological reality. Into the Thick of IT will showcase works from artists including:

  • Irene Junes's sculptural work is inspired by the visual similarities between geologic and human bodies, exploring themes of aging, growth, and mourning. June invites the audience to engage in a personal narrative of diasporic reconciliation and healing.

  • Tehan Ketema's photographic installation amplifies the experiences of the African diaspora and challenges the hegemonic Western gaze. Her research points to the subterfuge of a capitalist free market, and how it reveals itself as nothing more than an extension of imperial, colonial power that rests on the shaky feet of unsustainable resource extraction, and political destabilization.

  • Antonio Lechuga's large-scale lattice reconstructions of cobijas (blankets) reveal the turbulent intricacies and contradictions of Mexican-American history in Texas.

  • Ingrid Leyva's photographic series "Mexican Shoppers" documents portraits of shoppers crossing the Juarez-El Paso border carrying goods, offering reflections on the intersection of commerce, migration, and family.

  • Raven Moffett's three-channel video explores the breath and voice of more-than-human kin, encouraging viewers to transcend anthropocentrism and relate to other inhabitants of the land as equals within broader systems of biology and ecology.


Accompanying the exhibition, there will be public programming events, including a teen paper-mache workshop led by Xingaderas, an artist from El Paso, Texas; and a film night hosted in collaboration with Bodega Film Festival and  Melanie Wu, a curator based in New York City. The dates for both events will be announced in the coming week. Opening reception drinkies sponsored by Marfa Spirit Co. based in Marfa, Texas.

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Irene June (he/they) is a sculpture artist from Portland OR, and is currently based in Austin. He is a current MFA candidate in Sculpture at UT Austin, slated to graduate this upcoming May. He is a current Dedalus MFA Fellowship Nominee, and recipient of the College of Fine Arts Academic Excellence Continuing Fellowship Award in 2023. He has been featured in The Texas Daily, Oregon ArtsWatch, and Oregon Quarterly, and has exhibited in solo and group shows in Portland and Eugene OR, Seattle WA, and most recently Austin, Texas. 

Instagram: @ireou_
Website: www.irenejune.com

Ingrid Leyva (she/her) is a transborder, Mexican and lesbian artist from El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua. In her work, she explores the representation and identity of the communities from where she belongs. Ingrid collaborates in Aliens Anyways and Poligonas, two all women collectives with whom she explores issues of migration and gentrification. She is also part of the editorial committee at Deep Red Press.

Her artistic work has been exhibited in museums, independent cultural spaces and universities in Cd. Juárez, El Paso, San Antonio, California, Mexico City and New York. Her work is also part of private collections and recently, her series Mexican Shoppers was acquired by the Rio Grande Historical Collections at New Mexico State University.

Social Media: @ingridlv
Website: https://www.ingridleyva.com/

Raven Moffett (they/them) is a visual storyteller, artist, museum worker, and educator working on unceded Tohono O'odham and Pascua Yaqui land in Tucson, AZ, with their partner and three canine companions: Odin, Jasper, and Iinnii. Raven is currently pursuing a PhD in American Indian Studies at the University of Arizona with a focus on more-than-human kin recognition and representation in multimedia storytelling. Raven received their MFA in Studio Art (Photo, Video Imaging) from the University of Arizona in Tucson, AZ and their BA in Art and Visual Culture with a studio art emphasis and an Anthropology minor from Appalachian State University in Boone, NC.

Social Media: @feathered_talon
Website: https://www.ravenmoffett.net/

Antonio Lechuga (he/him) is a multidisciplinary artist who was born in and based out of Dallas, TX. He attended Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) in Los Angeles, CA as well as El Centro College in  Dallas, TX.  

Antonio’s practice focuses on the intersection of art, design, architecture and social change. He uses a varied visual language of materials and processes to discuss and investigate his culture and existence; both  his existence and experiences as a Tejano living in the 21st century and it’s constant battle with the erasure of  that history. Antonio uses the current condition of today’s political climate to inform and guide his work. Through  investigations, research and new technologies, Antonio begins to piece together new narratives of a future for the  Mexican-American of the Texas region while emphasizing and highlighting it’s rich, deep and turbulent past.  

He has exhibited work both nationally and internationally but most previously at many regional Dallas-Fort  Worth institutions including 500X Gallery, the Geometric MADI Museum, Arts Fort Worth, Craighead Green Gallery,  Ro2 Art Gallery, ArtRoom, Love Texas Art Galery and both the Oak Cliff Cultural Center and Latino Cultural Center in  Dallas, TX respectively. His work is included in private collections across the U.S. and in 2022 he opened his first  solo show titled Fences, at Love Texas Art Gallery in Fort Worth, TX, with his most recent solo exhibition Structures of  Softness in August of 2023 at the Oak Cultural Center in Dallas, TX and his current solo exhibition in 2024, Survival,  Death and Home at Daisha Board Gallery in Dallas, TX where he is currently represented.

Social: @lettucelook
Website: https://lettucelook.com/

Tehan Ketema (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist and educator currently based in Madison, WI, on Ho-Chunk land. Her work explores photography, video, and poetry, delving into new media and personal archives to understand history, territory, and identity. By amplifying the experiences of Africa and its diaspora, Ketema uses her practice to offer perspectives that revise and uncover colonized and enshrouded histories.

She holds an M.F.A. in Photo, Video, and Imaging from the University of Arizona and is currently the inaugural First Wave Arts and Education Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Social Media: @tehanmikeyel
Website: https://www.tehanketema.com


Special thanks to our writer who beautifully crafted our curatorial statement and provided support for grant writing : 

Anna Brody (she/they) is an artist and educator currently based out of Tucson, Arizona and some other places. She works with video, performance, and photography to describe and explore the non-linear, non-binary world of simultaneous connection and lateral growth. Their video installations and interactive performances express a lifetime preoccupation with the layering of romantic, familial, and platonic love relationships in our lives, and the mutual labor and trust required for them to thrive. As a queer and non-binary artist and educator, they hope only to shift decisively away from the transactional, and towards the transformational. Anna graduated magna cum laude with a B.F.A. from the Savannah College of Art and Design, and received her M.F.A. in Photo, Video, & Imaging from the University of Arizona in May 2021. Their work has been exhibited internationally, most recently at the Anthropology of Motherhood exhibition in Pittsburgh and G.A.S. Station in Berlin. 

Social: @danielstripedtiger1
Website: https://www.annabrody.net