Muñoz ‘breaks binding’ with exhibit

The NMSU Art Museum (UAM) will host "Celia Álvarez Muñoz: Breaking the Binding" Oct. 20-March 2, 2024, with a public opening reception 5:30-7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 20, at the NMSU Art Museum, 1308 E. University Ave., in Devasthali Hall, near the intersection of University Avenue and Solano Drive.

During the reception, Álvarez Muñoz will sign copies of her book, “Celia Álvarez Muñoz: Breaking the Binding.”

That weekend, UAM will collaborate on events with UTEP's Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts.

A series of bookmaking workshops will be held Saturdays, Nov. 4 and 18 and Dec. 2 at UAM. Workshop participants can choose to exhibit their books in the Mullenix Bridge Gallery alongside artwork by Álvarez Muñoz.

“Celia Álvarez Muñoz: Breaking the Binding" encompasses more than 35 artworks, showcasing Muñoz’s “remarkable career as a conceptual artist,” according to a UAM news release.

The exhibition originated from the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego and was curated by Kate Green, Ph.D., chief curator and Nancy E. Meinig curator of modern and contemporary art at Philbrook Museum of Art, and Isabel Casso, assistant curator at the museum.

Álvarez Muñoz was born in El Paso in 1937. She studied at UTEP, taking mostly commercial art classes.

“in 1977, at age 40, she enrolled in graduate school at University of North Texas (and) began work on her seminal series ‘Enlightenment,’ exploring her personal memories of life on the U.S.-Mexico border in the aftermath of the Great Depression. Álvarez Muñoz has exhibited in museums and galleries nationally and internationally.

The title of the exhibit and Álvarez Muñoz’s book “points to a literal break in the artist’s practice, but it also captures the way Álvarez Muñoz has for decades continuously ruptured and troubled categorical boundaries, breaking the bindings that separate the individual and the collective.”

Visit uam.nmsu.edu/exhibitions/exhibition-pages/breaking-the-binding-celia-alvarez-munoz.html.