Thank you to everyone who joined us for the 2024 CreArte Expo. Get ready—an even bigger CreArte Expo returns in September 2025!




Brownsville, Tx
CreArte Latino Arts & Humanities Conference
​University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley, Brownsville Campus
Join us for an exploration of Latino artistic expression including film, literature, visual arts, dance, food, music and more.
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​Location:
UTRGV Brownsville: Music, Science and Learning Center (BMSLC)
Room 3.125
1 W University Blvd
Brownsville, TX 78520
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TIME (all times are Central Time Zone)
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8-11am - Registration outside of presentation room
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9:00 -10:30
Session 1:
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Rodney Gomez: A visual poetry performance of a project which is a collection of lyric essays, poems about the experience of the urban.
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Aditi Basu: An analysis of the impact of Portuguese foods on Indian culinary history.
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Jessica Ramirez: of how Puerto Rican art, film, literature, and poetry highlight the impact of artists who bring attention to historical injustice and offer a sense of racial literacy that engages and struggles against U.S. hegemony.​
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10:45 -12:00
Session 2:
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Shweta Gupta: An assessment of how Sandra Cisneros in The House on Mango Street explores the concept of identity and the tension between cultures through the lens of its protagonist Esperanza Cordero’s coming-of-age journey.
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Laila Guadalupe Espinoza: An investigation of the color magenta as a set of tonal intensities that have come to visually speak, or represent, the ongoing three-decade enduring protest against feminicide and gender-based violence against Indigenous and Mestiza girls and women at U.S-Mexico Border city of Juarez, Chihuahua.
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Carolina Machado Oliveira: A study of how the Kuikuro and Manoky & Myky film collectives document and celebrate Indigenous traditions, languages, and worldviews.
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12:00 -12:50
Lunch Break
Two Documentaries From Mexico
Jamaica & Tamarindo: Afro Tradition in the Heart of Mexico - Director Ebony Bailey
Remover el corazon - Director Melissa Elizondo Moreno
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1:00 – 1:50
Session 3:
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Violeta De Leon Davila: Screening & Artist Talk The film calls attention to the alarming rate of femicide in México. and uses emotive movement to summon our collective courage to speak out against domestic violence wherever it occurs.
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Clara Jimenez: A contribution to existing scholarship on care work and violence in Cuarón’s Roma, which posits that domestic workers in Mexico City experience cohering public and private forms of violence in their professional roles.
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Caroline De La Garza: An essay on the graphic memoir Mexikid, by Pedro Martín. After our protagonist Peter faces a traumatic event in his father's RV as he is growing out of childhood and into adolescence, his developing Catholic morals help Peter quickly move on.
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2:00 - 2:50
Session 4:
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Michel Flores Tavizón: A presentation of outcomes and findings from project Resistencia Fronteriza - community-engaged workshops and pláticas where participants across the valley verbally and visually discussed their border narratives through the creation of zines and prints.
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Laia Vite: A journey of bi-national and cultural identities through the lens of being a Mexican national living in the United States, by way of digital illustration mixed with traditional mediums like woodcutting.
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3:00 – 3:50
Session 5:
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Lizzete Rendon: An invitation to artist mothers to talk about motherhood and express their emotions by creating beautiful artwork.
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Jean Braithwaite: Comics critics often refer to verbal and visual tracks. But the “visual” images are actually interpreted somatically.
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José Alaniz: An exploration of the ways in which Mexican American artists appropriated graphic narrative throughout the Chicanismo era, and how this overlap complicates the history of comics as a 20th-century U.S. artistic and literary form.
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4:00 - 5:00
Session 6: KEYNOTE ADDRESS
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Frederick Luis Aldama, aka Professor Latinx: – Professor Aldama invites you on a journey through the world of comics by and about Latinos. This exploration reveals how comics and visual storytelling generally can offer powerful ways to expand and enrich our understanding of what it means to be Latinx in the U.S.
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Conference Chair - Alejandra I. Ramírez, Ph.D. is an award winning artist, scholar, and educator. She is Assistant Professor of Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy Studies and an affiliate faculty member for Mexican American Studies and Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of Texas at Rio Grande Valley in Brownsville.
The conference is presented by the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. UTRGV Arts offers the Rio Grande Valley and campus community access to world-class visual and performance art events, including concerts, plays, exhibits, lectures, and workshops hosted by the academic departments and schools at the UTRGV College of Fine Arts, including:
School of Art & Design
School of Music
Department of Theatre
Dance Department
Creative Writing Department
Additionally, UTRGV Arts includes events hosted by the UTRGV Center for Latin American Arts (CLAA). https://www.utrgv.edu/arts
The conference is presented in association with the CreArte Expo: Comic-Con & Latino Cultural Festival, a weekend-long celebration of Latino culture. Attendees immerse themselves in Latino culture through literature, film, music, dance, cosplay, dance, comics and much more.
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The conference is held in association with the CreArte Expo Latino Cultural Festival, a celebration of Latino culture.
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