Celia Álvarez Muñoz: Breaking the Binding

Formerly on View

March 16, 2023 to August 13, 2023

Spanning forty years, this exhibition is the first career retrospective of Conceptual artist Celia Álvarez Muñoz (b. 1937, El Paso, TX). Featuring over thirty-five artworks – including large-scale immersive installations, photographic series, and book projects – this major exhibition highlights the artist’s playful, witty style, often characterized by her use of bilingual puns and mistranslations in both text and image. Muñoz often draws inspiration from her lived experience as a resident of the United States-Mexico borderlands.

This exhibition will be accompanied by a full-color publication and is curated by Dr. Kate Green, Chief Curator & Nancy E. Meinig Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art at Philbrook Museum of Art, and Isabel Casso, Assistant Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.

Bright yellow wall with text and an illustration of a person looking out the train

Yellow wall with black and white illustration of train made of our cans with text on top

Celia Álvarez Muñoz, "Which Came First?" Enlightenment #4, 1982. Museum purchase, Elizabeth W. Russell Foundation Fund and gift of the artist

Installation image of the exhibition Breaking, showing three chairs underneath street signs with a hot pink wall in the background the Binding

Cropped image of the front of a green house with green shrubbery coming in and out of frame; suspended green street signs above

“Must-see museum show opening in Spring 2023”
—Art in America

“...the exhibition is, in its essence, a celebration of a woman, a proud Chicana and self-proclaimed ‘artivist,’ who has broken so many boundaries.”
—San Diego Union-Tribune

“At first glance, with the oversized illustrations and text, the bright colors and found objects suspended from the ceiling, it feels like stepping inside a children's book — on a massive scale.”
—KPBS (NPR)

This exhibition is made possible with underwriting support from the Cochrane Exhibition Fund.