Browsing by Subject "El Río Habla"

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The public poetics of Celia Alvarez Muñoz
(2019-08) Retta, Sofia Virginia; Flaherty, George F., 1978-
This thesis concentrates on the public art practice of Celia Alvarez Muñoz (born 1937 in El Paso, Texas), focusing specifically on El Río Habla (The River Speaks), 2000-01, located on the River Walk in San Antonio, Texas. In this work, Muñoz employs poetry, water, space, and artifacts to tell the story of the San Antonio River. This public artwork also reveals the primary qualities and concerns of Muñoz’s practice, namely language, history, time, and place. Throughout my analysis of El Río Habla, my approach concentrates on the experiences of looking, reading, listening, and moving while also offering interpretations of the poetry, which is the central feature of the work. While El Río Habla is the primary focus of this thesis, I also examine Muñoz’s practice through three other works across a variety of genres: a public art project in a light rail station, a museum installation, and an artist’s book. I demonstrate that her work in public art, though rarely the subject of scholarship, is equally critical to understanding her practice as the books, photography, and installations for which she is best known. I maintain that her multimedia practice is characterized by her keen attention to local contexts, histories, and communities, as she uncovers hidden and neglected histories of the places in which she is working. Ultimately, this thesis argues that El Río Habla is a critical work of place-specific public art, as it subverts the dominant narratives of San Antonio’s history, reveals the city’s obscured histories, and centers the river as a foundational yet continually changing force and place within the city