Esteban Cabeza de Baca

Vessels

Esteban Cabeza de Baca’s Vessels depicts a sunset landscape in the New Mexican desert. The title of the painting, Vessels, refers to the clay pots featured at the bottom, some adorned with graffiti that obscures their three-dimensionality. The title also refers to the body as a human vessel. Its hollowed-out form at the center could be that of the artist himself, who is completed by the history, wisdom, and beauty of the landscape. Cabeza de Baca has shared about feeling disconnected from his dual Mexican and Native American heritage. Creating art has been—in his words—a “healing gesture of connecting to these histories and reconnecting [with]...the land.” His art embodies the Chicano/Latino term “nepantla,” which refers to the state of “in-betweenness.” This captures the artist’s evolving relationship with his cultural identity, as well as the physical “in-betweenness” of border regions like those in New Mexico. Cabeza de Baca himself was raised in San Ysidro, a major crossing between San Diego, California, and Tijuana, Mexico.