The Efroymson Emerging Artist in Residence Program

YO TENGO The Efroymson Emerging Artist in Residence Program NOMBRE and the Power of Art to Benefit Diverse Publics

Ruth Leonela Buentello installing Yo Tengo Nombre. In her exhibition Yo Tengo Nombre, artist Ruth Leonela Buentello explored her cultural identity as a Xicana and a descendent of Mexican immigrants in the United States, contextualized within an increasingly tense present day. The paintings and constructions reference images from family albums and personal memories, along with now-unforgettable news photos chronicling ICE raids, abuse of undocumented immigrants, and children confined in detention centers.

Buentello was the institute’s third Efroymson Emerging Artist in Residence. Each year since 2017, an early-career artist is commissioned to create a new work of art as part of a full-scale exhibition. The residency is supported by a $25,000 grant from the Efroymson Family Fund, a unique donor-led fund of the Central Indiana Community Foundation, under the direction of U-M alumnus Jeremy Efroymson.

We Need Borders, Ruth Leonela Buentello

Arts Curator Amanda Krugliak talks to students about Yo Tengo Nombre.

80 PORTRAITS OF UNDOCUMENTED YOUTH DETAINED AT THE U.S./MEXICO BORDER INCLUDED IN THE YO TENGO NOMBRE EXHIBITION.

In some paintings, as part of her process, the artist asked family members to pose for re-enactments of these “breaking news” tableaus. The overlay of present, past, private and public honored an intricate, sometimes tangled cultural history, where beginnings, ends and undoings run through their collective stories.

Buentello’s compositions suggest relationships to the luminosity of Diego Velazquez, the tenderness of Frida Kahlo, the championed workers of Diego Rivera, and the blurred “ghost” portraits of Gerhard Richter. Rather than derivative, this connects her work on her own terms to an ongoing visual conversation and painting tradition.

Her compositions incorporate handmade elements, emphasizing the integrity of labor through their physicality and directness, and the empowerment that comes with each brushstroke, stitch, or cutout in succession. Buentello’s incorporation of traditional themes and methods of narrative painting also challenges these traditions, crafting bold new spaces for Xicana narratives in the annals of art history. Much of the work in Yo Tengo Nombre was presented publicly for the first time. The artist worked closely and collaboratively with curator Amanda Krugliak and gallery coordinator Juliet Hinely, exploring different ways materially to translate her images and content, printing digitally onto fabric and vinyl. She also developed meaningful relationships with U-M faculty, working through critical questions on how best to contextualize sensitively visual culture that bears witness to trauma.

Key to the residency was availing the artist the support, time and space to explore her ideas, take risks, with the

Buentello’s photo album of the youth asylum seekers she worked with, part of Yo Tengo Nombre.

benefit of countless informed dialogues. The exhibition itself continued to evolve, Beuentello re-engaging daily with the installation and making ongoing edits or additions. The overall project was defined by the fluidity of the creative process and