GALLERY | $5-10 SUGGESTED DONATION | ALL AGES | “Miscelánea Divina” is a reimagination of my life on the United States-Mexico border. Growing up in Northern Mexico, I was impacted by political and commercial art and its powerful hold on local communities. In a time when it has become increasingly difficult to separate commodities from their imposed political affiliations, I often wonder how companies influence our existence and skew our perception of cultural heritage and identity.
Within the last year, CEMEX (a Mexican multinational building materials company, headquartered in San Pedro Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico) has set up an excavation site in South Phoenix across from my home. Their presence occupies space that could have otherwise been used for community parks, grocery stores, or other amenities my neighborhood lacks. Inspired by what is becoming a company town, the work in this series investigates our land use, consumption, and commodification of resources.
Miscelánea is the Spanish term for a collection of miscellaneous objects or, more specifically, a neighborhood store selling assorted goods and groceries, typically named after the families that owned them. If this exhibition is my collection of miscellaneous art objects, which company town would Miscelánea Divina belong to?
Angela Divina is a Mexican-American artist whose practice combines traditional art mediums with ready-made materials onto large-format mixed media paintings. By juxtaposing commercial design imagery with regional folk art, her work critiques the commodification of land, culture, and resources, and its impact on identity politics. Divina’s upbringing between the Southwestern United States and Northern-Central Mexico is reflected in her subject matter, often including domestic goods, commercial product logos, political advertisements, and native landscapes typical of the region.
Divina was born in Los Angeles, California, and earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts in 2018. Her work has been exhibited in numerous galleries, including the Los Angeles LGBT Center and the Institute of Contemporary Art San Diego. Divina’s work has also been featured commercially in Target’s line of HeyDay electronic accessories. She currently resides in Phoenix, Arizona, and is an advocate for desert preservation.