Verónica Gaona Sigo Tumbado, Sigo Coronando

Images courtesy of Ronald L. Jones

In Sigo Tumbado, Sigo Coronando, Verónica Gaona explores characteristics of transnationality, impermanence, and monumentality across international borders. By using trokiando aesthetics, Gaona reveals spatial practices of migrant families and the desire to concretize immortal significance. Gaona employs her iconic Ford F-150 truck, burn out marks, polarized tinted window glass, aluminum images, and vinyl to resolve fragmented memories, subvert systems of power, and solidify a place of belonging in the Mexican landscape. 

“If we reflect on traditional monuments, which are Eurocentric, emphasize solidity, have weight, have a sense of permanence, and are usually visible, then truck ephemera can be used and assembled as an alternative social/cultural monument that commemorates migrant labor, but at the same time depicts the consequences of dispersing family members across geographies for a better future.”-Verónica Gaona

Verónica Gaona is an artist from Brownsville, TX, a city along the South Texas-Mexico border landscape. Gaona received a Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art from the University of Houston and a Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication from The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. She has been the recipient of the national Artadia Award and the Chispa Award by The US Latinx Art Forum. In 2022, Gaona participated in Monumentality in Art: Memory, History, and Impermanence in Diaspora panel at the College Art Association conference in Chicago and participated in the Engaging Latinx Art: National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Currently, she is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Houston. Verónica Gaona is represented by Presa House Gallery in San Antonio, Texas.

Established in 2006, the Artist Studio Program offers residencies to Texas-based artists who are developing their artistic practice. Once selected, residents receive a monthly stipend, materials allowance, and 24-hour access to a private studio. Lawndale also provides residents with access to a welcoming and vibrant community of working artists, curators, critics, and patrons of contemporary art. Throughout the nine-month residency, the artists work closely with each other and Lawndale staff on the development and production of new work that will be exhibited at Lawndale in the spring. 

Major support for the Artist Studio Program is provided by Kathrine G. McGovern/The John P. McGovern Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.