Antonio Lechuga, Structures of Softness (detail), 2022-23. Courtesy of the Oak Cliff Cultural Center.
Featured now through Sep. 2 at the Oak Cliff Cultural Center is “Structures of Softness,” an immersive installation inspired by the divisiveness of border walls. The exhibit was created by Dallas artist Antonio Lechuga.
The exhibit is open and free to the public.
The exhibit features tall, fence-like structures that are wrapped in blankets to juxtapose comfort with the cold, hard structure that exists along the United States and Mexico border.
“There’s lots of examples of fences, and fences working… I think a large part of what a wall is, what a fence is, is to divide people or to divide things — environment, cultures, history, and people,” Lechuga said in an interview with Glasstire. “It does a lot of things that we don’t want it to do. And it doesn’t have to. It doesn’t have to divide, it doesn’t have to push people away. It doesn’t have to say ‘this is mine and that is yours.’ ”
Lechuga was born in Dallas in 1985 and is a multidisciplinary artist who attended both Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) in Los Angeles, CA and El Centro College in Dallas. He has had works exhibited nationally and internationally, but most previously has appeared at various North Texas institutions.
In 2022, Lechuga opened his first solo show titled Fences at Love Texas Art Gallery in Fort Worth.
The Oak Cliff Cultural Center exhibit is one of Lechuga’s current installations, another can be viewed at the Daisha Board Gallery.
“(Lechuga) 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 its constant battle with the erasure of that history,” an exhibit description by the Cultural Center says. “Lechuga’s installation challenges the future function of a border wall and the notion of security, altering the collective experience of walls and borders of all kinds.”
