Inside the Purple House

Inside the Purple House

Oct 30–Nov 20, 1998

Inside the Purple House exhibited artworks from Sandra Cisneros and curated by Franco Mondini-Ruiz. Cisneros wanted the show to “demonstrate what it means to live, support, and work with Latino artists in San Antonio today.” She wrote of the exhibition, “it is a vignette distillation and environment of an artist’s home, my home, recontextualized inside Blue Star Art Space’s facilities. It highlights the Texas home as a creative space for the multiple invented constructions of identity.” Cisneros wrote, “art for me doesn’t exist without arranging beside it a vase of flowers, a hand painted trunk, a chair, a Mexican toy. All of these elements add to the meaning and spirit of a piece I’ve purchased, like arranging elements in an altar, or moving words around in a line of poetry. Gathered together they tell a story. This show is an attempt to invent a new space, halfway between gallery and house, a third space which is both and neither, that showcases not only the art object, but pays homage to the little objects of everyday.”