Nestor Intervention

Free and open to the public: a one-night-only event in downtown Laredo, Texas.

Nestor Intervention

on the Historic Plaza Theatre 1012-1/2 Hidalgo St, Laredo, TX, 78040

Saturday, March 25, 2023, 5 - 10 PM

A public art project sponsored by Daphne Art Foundation 

presented by Cultivarte Laredo and 

Future Vessel in partnership with the City of Laredo

Envisioned and produced while taking part in Laredo’s inaugural artist residency offered by Cultivarte Laredo in 2022, this work makes use of the 1947 theatre façade as a frame through which view an art display of objects, and their sublimated images on organza and velour.

The works inquire about local rasquachismo, a term that Chicano art scholar Tomás Ybarra-Frausto describes as a "cultural sensibility" that is “understood especially among the working class.” This is in artistic reflection of downtown Laredo’s complex layers: where memories and promises, vacancies and homelessness, commerce and al ahi se va, multi-cultural/lingual and mixed/schizo-identities all co-exist.

Inviting visitors to perceive objects and their reproductions, this artistic intervention by Nestor questions the relations between parts and wholes. How does sight, vision, and light bounce between objects, and beyond the confines of frames?

Echoing aspects of viewership and voyeurism characteristic to the experiences of theater and cinema, this event renders the beautiful historic Laredo landmark as ‘still alive’ from the perspective of creative reuse.

This public art project presents Laredo audiences the notion of how an experimental art may be encountered beyond traditional exhibition spaces, broadening the contexts of appreciation (artistic, architectural, historical) in perceiving and remembering familiar spaces in unexpected ways.

This event coincides with Estos Vatos BorderTown GetDown car show, which fills “the Downtown Streets of Laredo with the most badass Vehicles of Laredo.”

This event occurs on the unceded land of the Alazapas, Lipan Apache, Coahuiltecan, and Carrizo/Comecrudo peoples, among other tribes. You are asked to join in acknowledging their communities, their elders both past and present, as well as future generations; and also the exclusions and erasures of many Indigenous peoples, including those on whose land this event occurs. This acknowledgement attempts to demonstrate a commitment to beginning the process of working to dismantle the ongoing legacies of settler colonialism.