# Celeste De Luna

Celeste De Luna (born 1974) is a self-taught American Chicana visual artist, printmaker, and educator. She is known for her large-scale woodcut prints and fabric installations, which aim to capture personal and collective experiences.

## Biography

De Luna lived in Illinois during her early life, and was raised in the lower Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. She is a second-generation Tejana. Her work focuses on exploring Americanism through different lenses.
She graduated from St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas for her undergraduate degree, and the University of Texas–Pan American where she earned her Master of Fine Arts degree. She currently teaches art at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in Brownsville.
In Texas, De Luna developed a deep connection to the region's cultural tapestry. Her upbringing influenced her artistic vision, prompting her to explore themes related to life along the borderlands, identity, and migration in her work. Although her artwork is self described as regional, she uses it to provide insight into the perspectives of those who are classified as undocumented.
Other influences that are present in her artwork include plants and animals found in the Rio Grande Valley as well as Catholicism. Her work reflects this culture as she describes it as "an act against forgetting my Tejana roots. It is a protest against complete assimilation". Her work invites the viewer to reflect and learn further about topics explored in her art.
She currently lives in San Antonio, and creates work from her home studio, "Metzli Press" Celeste's use of materials such as lace, fibers, and other non-ordinary materials make her art have a Rascuache spirit. Artistically, she admires symbolists like Henri Rousseau and Paul Gauguin, as well as Frida Kahlo and Amalia Mesa-Bains due to their Chicana spirit and influence.

## Art

Necrocitizen is a black-and-white woodcut print featured on the cover of the book Fencing in Democracy by Miguel Diaz-Barriga and Margaret Dorsey. The image in this print features a skull, representing De Luna's exploration of oppressive structures imposed on brown bodies, treated as second-class citizens.
BorderLand X-scapes is an art workshop with the primary goal of decolonizing the border through a futuristic lens, highlighting indigenous populations.
Our Lady of the Checkpoint is a black and white woodcut and vinyl piece on archival paper from 2020. The print features an immigrant version of the Virgin de Guadalupe walking into America barefoot with barbed wire around her.
Healing Borderland Hand is a linocut from 2023 which features many details including the Virgin de Guadalupe, a skull, cacti, flowers, a bird, barbed wire, and a bug. It is clear that many of the parts of this piece come from her catholic roots or from living in Texas.
Her art has been included at the Blanton Museum of Art, Mexic-Arte Museum, Mulvane Art Museum, and the UTSA Print Collections. It has been shown at exhibitions in Vancouver, Michoacan, and Estonia.
Her awards and residencies have been the Changarrito Residency at the Mexic-Arte Museum, Vermont Studio Center Residency in Johnson, Vermont, Sustainable Arts Foundation Finalist in Printmaking at the Sustainable Arts Foundation for the Tony and Caroline Grant, a Spudnik Press Artist in Residence in Chicago, Illinois, a residency at Activating Vacancy Arts Incubator at buildingcommunityWORKSHOP in Brownsville, Texas, a Merit Award at the 10th Annual Human Rights Art Exhibition for South Texas College in McAllen, Texas, Contemporary Art Month Award Alchemic Reactions Award for Collaborating Artists in San Antonio, Texas, and a Contemporary Art Month Cammie Award with Spare Parts Lady Base Gallery in San Antonio, Texas.
De Luna is the co-founder of Las Imaginistas, a socially engaged art collective that contributes to various projects aimed at fostering community dialogue and social awareness. Las Imaginstas collaborates with professors from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley to examine the mind and body of Brownsville and challenge colonial ideologies through the city's architecture. Las Imaginistas received a 2017 Artplace America Creative Placemaking grant and 2018 A Blade of Grass Fellows.