Ya Hecho: Readymade in the Borderlands @ Tucson Museum of Art

Ya Hecho: Readymade in the Borderlands 

Tucson Museum of Art 

Through November 30, 2025

Lorena Ochoa 

Freedom of Speech, 2025 

Norman Rockwell book depicting American Freedoms, 

Inglés Sin Barreras Workbook, ceiling tile, Plaskolite ceiling grid, 

rotary phone, trimmer line, galvanized metal tape, 

intaglio on Plexiglass, acrylic, polymer, 

and enamel on wooden panel

Image courtesy of the Artist 

José Villalobos 

Deeply Rooted in Machismo, 2025 

Found boots, natural rope 

Image courtesy of the Artist 

Narsiso Martinez 

Unnumbered Portraits 3, 2023 

Linocut prints on found produce boxes 

Collection of the Tucson Museum of Art 

Museum Purchase 

Funds provided by Latin American Art Patrons, 

Sue and Maurice Nieland, and David and Julia Andres. 2024.11

Gil Rocha 

Untitled XX, 2023 

Found objects

Image courtesy of the Artist 

Tucson Museum of Art and Historic Block presents Ya Hecho: Readymade in the Borderlands guest curated by Rigoberto Luna.

This exhibition features contemporary artists living and working from both sides of the United States-Mexico border while focusing on the significance of materials and place in art-making practices. Gesturing towards the Chicano sensibilities of rasquachismo—a legacy of resourcefulness born from necessity—blended with the European and American tradition of the readymade, these artists’ transform mass-produced and found objects to explore themes of land and labor, movement and migration, materiality of place, and beyond borders.

Anne Breckenridge Barrett, TMA’s Jon and Linda Ender Director and CEO reflects, “This exhibition powerfully embodies the Tucson Museum of Art’s mission to connect art to life. Ya Hecho explores how artists engage in making through personal conceptual practice using found objects—welcoming a dialogue around lived experience in the Borderlands. TMA has a longstanding commitment to collecting contemporary and Latin American art, making this a meaningful addition to our ongoing focus on art of our region and its far-reaching impact.”

Installation photo of Ya Hecho: Readymade in the Borderlands 

featuring artworks by Margarita Cabrera and co-artists, 

Andrés Caballero and Vanessa Saavedra

Courtesy of the Tucson Museum of Art 

Photo: Tina Lieberman

Installation photo of Ya Hecho: Readymade in the Borderlands 

featuring artworks by Lorena Ochoa, Daisy Quezada Ureña, 

Miriam Salado, and Vicente Telles

Courtesy of the Tucson Museum of Art 

Photo: Tina Lieberman

Installation photo of Ya Hecho: Readymade in the Borderlands 

featuring artworks by María José Crespo, Federico Cuatlacuatl, 

Raúl De Lara, Rubén Ulises Rodríguez Montoya, 

and Gloria Martinez-Granados 

Courtesy of the Tucson Museum of Art 

Photo: Tina Lieberman

The exhibition amplifies the contributions of Latinx artists from the Southwest while highlighting shared approaches to storytelling, art-making, and cross-cultural exchanges. Featuring 42 artworks by 18 artists made over the last 20 years, Ya Hecho evokes the landscape and cultural aesthetic of the Borderlands through sculpture and installation deeply rooted in personal experiences and historical narratives.

Guest curator Rigoberto Luna reflects, “This exhibition is important because the works emerge from the social and material realities of Borderland communities—it is both personal and about an important creative moment. Mobilizing everyday materials—cardboard, produce bags, truck parts—these artists engage in transformative acts. Through resourcefulness and care, they reveal that what is often overlooked or discarded can hold the deepest meaning about who we are.”

By inventively synthesizing found and familiar objects, artists in Ya Hecho create a language of possibility rooted in materials, bridging personal associations with complex diasporic themes—conveying histories of labor, migration, survival, and resilience.

Gil Rocha 

REST, 2024 

Found objects 

Image courtesy of the Artist

Federico Cuatlacuatl 

Nacaxtotomo, 2024 

Wearable sculpture 

Image courtesy of the Artist 

Photo: Camilo Pachon

Ya Hecho includes the artwork of Andrés Caballero and Vanessa Saavedra, Margarita Cabrera, María José Crespo. Federico Cuatlacuatl, Raúl De Lara, Verónica Gaona, Gloria Martinez-Granados, Narsiso Martinez, Sophia Mayorga, Rubén Ulises Rodríguez Montoya, Lorena Ochoa, Daisy Quezada Ureña, Gil Rocha, Miriam Salado, Vicente Telles, José Villalobos, and Judi Werthein. Also featured in the exhibition are poems by Tucson-based Diana Marie Delgado, Gabriel Dozal, Melani “Mele” Martinez, and Logan Phillips, which expands on main themes.

TUSCON MUSEUM OF ART

Tucson Museum of Art and Historic Block

140 North Main Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85701

www.tucsonmuseumofart.org

Ya Hecho: Readymade in the Borderlands 

Tucson Museum of Art , July 3 – November 30, 2025

Louise Nevelson Collages @ Kayne Griffin, Los Angeles - Collages 1957 – 1982

Louise Nevelson

Collages 1957 – 1982

Kayne Griffin, Los Angeles 

September 17 - October 30, 2021

Kayne Griffin presents an exhibition of work by LOUISE NEVELSON (1899-1988) titled Collages 1957 – 1982. This exhibition, Nevelson’s first at Kayne Griffin, presents a selection of her collage works, an integral yet rarely shown component of her practice.

Louise Nevelson, an artist known for her monochrome, found-object sculptures, also created smaller scale collage works. These collages provide an in-depth look into her methodology, study, and practice. The selection of nine collages in this exhibition highlights her initial experimentation with the medium in the late-1950s as well as the continuation and development of the practice through the later years of her life.

The early collages exemplify Nevelson’s use of found objects. The artist would walk around her studio neighborhood in New York and collect fragments of objects she found on the street. In four of the earliest works, on view from the years 1957 – 1959, Louise Nevelson uses a combination of cardboard, paint, wire, foil, newspaper, and wood. By reclaiming these materials, Louise Nevelson wanted to bring the discarded back to life and repurpose it within a new environment. She became known for developing a practice using mostly muted and monochrome palettes in her sculptural works which she would paint black, white, or gold to create a sense of continuity among the array of assembled elements. However, in her collage works, Louise Nevelson focuses and often centers within her compositions colored objects, such as the bright orange found in Untitled (1959). This draws the viewers eye deeper into the work , creating an effect of surface tension similar to low-relief sculpture.

Her collages from the 1960s and 1970s take on a more minimal and reductive approach. Louise Nevelson converges the found materials to a focal point skewed off-center, layering shapes and scraps in decreasing sizes and form. Untitled (1982), breaks away from the warm tones and monochromatic materiality and introduces an ornate assemblage of patterned fabrics and objects that are interwoven together. They remain flatter and closer to the background black surface, a contrast to the dimension given to her 1960s and 1970s collages. These collages highlight her innovative use of everyday objects.

As Louise Nevelson explains, “I always wanted to show the world that art is everywhere, except it has to pass through a creative mind. My world is the world of reality; my world is the world of creation, that is the world of reality.”

LOUISE NEVELSON (b. 1899, Kiev; d. 1988, New York) has been the subject of one-artist exhibitions at numerous institutions including The Jewish Museum, New York (1965, 2007); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1967, 1970, 1980, 1987, 1998); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (1973); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (1973); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1986); Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome (1994); Centre national d’art et de culture Georges Pompidou, Paris (1997); Fondazione Roma Museo (2013). She represented the United States at the Venice Biennale in 1962, and her work was again included in the Biennale in 1976. Nevelson’s art has also been featured in prominent group exhibitions including Sixteen Americans, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1959–60); The Art of Assemblage, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1961); and Documenta (1964, 1968). Today her work is held in over ninety public collections worldwide including many of the most prominent museums worldwide.

KAYNE GRIFFIN

1201 S La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90019

www.kaynegriffin.com