EVITA TEZENO BREAKS THROUGH

The Dallas-based artist will make her first appearance at Dallas Art Fair with Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.

BY DARRYL RATCLIFF PHOTOGRAPHY BY LUIS MARTINEZ

Evita Tezeno, Joy, Compassion, and Generosity, 2022, mixed media collage on canvas, 48 x 48 in. Courtesy of the artist and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles, to be shown at Dallas Art Fair. Photograph by Lawrence Jenkins. Evita Tezeno in her studio.

Evita Tezeno is no longer being ignored. Not nationally, where she is selling out art fair booths including NADA Miami (a satellite art fair held during Art Basel Miami) and having widely acclaimed solo exhibitions in Los Angeles, and finally not locally, as the longtime Dallas-based artist will be one of two artists showing at the Luis De Jesus Los Angeles booth at the Dallas Art Fair this month. When asked about the secret to her resurgence and keeping faith during the decades when the art world seemed like it had moved past her, Tezeno replies, “I just held my mouth right.”

Tezeno, a Black woman who was raised in Port Arthur, Texas, but has lived more than half of her life in Dallas, has been a practicing artist for over thirty years. She is known for her multimedia collages utilizing painted pieces of paper to produce images of everyday Black people, often rooted in her childhood memories. Tezeno first achieved success in the late ’90s when she was the first female artist to create a poster for the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. That led to a steady career with an East Coast gallery that consistently sold her work, but it did not lead to the type of breakthrough she had hoped for.

“One of my life goals is to be in a museum collection. It is an honor to be in front of thousands of people who admire your work and study your work and wonder what you are thinking,” Tezeno says. So she took a calculated risk and pulled back from showing at galleries that couldn’t help her with her big goal. Then a New York gallery sold her art to Denzel Washington, and Samuel L Jackson purchased a piece as an anniversary gift for his wife. Then an unexpected message on Instagram came her way from the very type of gallery she was hoping to attract—Luis De Jesus Los Angeles. “I’m a praying woman. I said, ‘Lord I wanted it to happen,’ and it happened,” Tezeno says.

In addition to being a supremely talented artist, Tezeno also had a long career as a vegan chef known for her vegan meats, briskets, gouda, and charcuterie boards. She retired from this work in 2019, but there is perhaps a connection between her style as a collage artist and her inventiveness in the kitchen. And Tezeno readily and proudly announces her artistic influences: Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, William H. Johnson, and Bisa Butler, amongst others. She is struck by how these artists “interpreted Black life and Black joy; they are guideposts to me.”

Tezeno is delighted when teachers use her work to teach young people in the classroom. She hopes her work can be a guidepost for current artists, particularly as an example of how to depict Black people. “We have been so downtrodden by circumstances, but I wanted to show the other aspects of the joy, and family, and we are still a noble people.” she says. Her work certainly does show this in the straightforward, earnest gazes of many of her figures, and the textured scenes of ordinary, rural Black life from her childhood memories. Tezeno describes her work as contemporary folk, a way of both looking to the past and the future simultaneously. It is as if she unearths poignant messages for contemporary audiences from memories that may soon be forgotten.

In many ways this reflects Tezeno’s career. She recalls meeting with Dallas art galleries and being told her work belonged on greeting cards. The Black Lives Matter movement, which reached a fever pitch with the death of George Floyd, helped many people reassess artists and work that they might have previously overlooked. Now the interest sparks new challenges for Tezeno as her collector base shifts and her stature as an artist continues to rise. “I have been called an emerging artist for all of my career, and I am 61 years old and still emerging,” she says.

Perhaps soon enough she can shed that label. Next up for Tezeno is a solo show at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles Gallery that opens April 16 in Los Angeles. And then her homecoming at the Dallas Art Fair, where maybe, just maybe, she will have her first museum acquisition. “I am in a zone,” Tezeno says. “I just want to embrace the moment.” P

Evita Tezeno, Cherish the Moment, 2022, mixed media collage on canvas, 48 x 30 in. Available at Dallas Art Fair.