Gil Rocha | THE BORDER IS A WEAPON

Join us for an amazing conversation with Gil Rocha, curator of The Border is a Weapon and long-time friend and collaborator of the Other Border Wall Collective. Here he speaks candidly with our wonderful season three host, Tereneh Idia.

Gil Rocha is a south Texas artist, educator, and curator born in Laredo. He earned a Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2006), a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Texas at San Antonio (1999), and is certified as an all-level Texas Educator from Texas A&M International University (2002).

For the past 25 years, Rocha’s professional artistic career has led him to engage in a variety of programs taking on roles that span from facilitating workshops for community based projects, participating on panels, and working on public artworks and murals, in collaboration with galleries and museums on the national and international level. His artwork expands across painting, collage, sculpture, installation, and writing. He focuses on issues about the U.S./Mexico border and takes on a survivalist approach known as “Rasquache.” Rocha’s role as an educator and avid advocate for the arts has positively impacted his students, peers and community.

Rocha’s artwork was recently featured in two online magazines, PASSAGE Visions (Issue 6) and Maake Magazine (Issue 11), and in two collective exhibitions, “Son de Allá, Son de Acá” in Albuquerque, NM and “Desde La Frontera” in San Antonio, TX. He curated the traveling exhibition “The Border is a Weapon”, a project of the Other Border Wall Collective, currently on view at the Laredo Center for the Arts. In 2021, Rocha presented his work at the Sixth Biennial Inter-American Studies Conference “Walls, Bridges, Borders” and the International Sculpture Conference “Identity, Race & Culture: Misconceptions along La Frontera.” His artwork has also been exhibited at the Texas Biennial in Austin (2017) and the Trans-Border Biennial in El Paso Museum of Art and El Museo de Arte in Ciudad Juarez (2018).

Rocha is currently preparing for an upcoming group exhibition in Austin, TX and was invited to curate the 2023 Contemporary Art Month Perennial in San Antonio, TX.