FORT WORTH, Texas — There’s a new exhibit at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center, focusing on local minority artists.
“Our Faces, Our Voices” features self-portraits by more than a dozen artists from North Texas. The exhibit runs through Nov. 7.
Jeremy Biggers is one of the featured artists.
“I didn't want to hide behind cute little filters,” Biggers said. “I wanted to document where I am in life in terms of the good (and) the bad.”
Biggers painted the Selena Quintanilla mural in Bishop Arts.
Compared to all the others in the exhibit, Biggers’ self-portrait at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center is the smallest in size.
“I wanted my piece to be something that you couldn't consume from across the room,” Biggers said. “You had to get up closer to it and really examine it.”
Ray Wyatt and his wife, Shauna Benoit, curated the "Our Faces, Our Voices" exhibit together, choosing to feature 15 different area artists.
“Growing up, we didn't see a whole lot of people that look like us,” Wyatt said. “Any time you go to museums, most of the focus is going to be on European art or it's going to be on Renaissance artists. You don't see a whole lot of Black and brown faces.”
“The Fort Worth Community Arts Center is really about democratizing space,” exhibitions manager Giovanni Valderas said. “If individuals from the community can come there, and see almost reflections of themselves in our space, it creates a kind of self-value. It starts a really genuine conversation about being heard and also being seen.”
The Fort Worth Community Arts Center is located at 1300 Gendy St., Fort Worth, TX 76107.