Tito’s Prize
2024 Awardee
Bella Varela
Big Medium proudly announces Bella Varela as the seventh awardee of the Tito's Prize!
Funded by a generous gift from Tito’s Handmade Vodka and facilitated by Big Medium,
Varela will receive an unrestricted award of $15,000 and a solo exhibition
at the Big Medium Gallery in the spring of 2025.
The 2024 Curatorial Panel includes Dr. Anita Bateman, Associate Curator in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at MFAH The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston,
Dr. Leigh A. Arnold, Nasher Curator, and Coka Treviño, Curator and Artistic Director at Big Medium.
The three-member panel unanimously selected the prize-winning artist.
““Wow! I’m thrilled to announce that I’ll be exhibiting Blanket Zone at Big Medium this coming year. This is a massive opportunity for my career, and I can’t wait to showcase this new work in a city that holds a special place in my heart. Winning the Tito’s Prize will provide the time, resources, and support to take this idea to the next level, allowing me to focus on the teeny-tiny details that we, as working artists don’t always have time to obsess over. Let’s go!!”
From a social standpoint this prize represents a major shift for my career since moving to Austin. I’ve been in the city for four years now but all of my solo shows and major projects have been overseas. The Tito’s Prize exhibition at Big Medium is my opportunity to do something special locally and to share it face-to-face with art lovers in Austin. I’m excited to meet everyone in person. I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time.”
Using video, photography, found objects, and textiles, I create installations that layer my personal experiences with American history and popular culture. Navigating the fine line between playful and critical, my work explores the intersections of immigration, family, gender identity, and sexuality. Within my work, I dissect iconic materials and archives to critique mainstream anti-immigration rhetoric and subvert the appropriation of Latinx culture. I rearrange personal and found video footage, TikTok songs, thrifted souvenirs, and San Marcos-inspired blankets to create physical gaps where new meanings can be interpreted and carve out spaces where hybrid identities can exist and thrive. Using rasquache sensibilities, I distort ideas of patriotism and nationalism, revealing the hollow promises that lie beneath them. Through my multimedia practice I have developed my own hybrid language to visualize my family's migration from Guatemala through the US-Mexico border to Washington DC and the shores of New England.
My video and photography work combine analog photography with green screens, 360 cameras, and drones to create non-linear narratives that reference viral political and pop-culture moments and critique the way online audiences consistently create, consume, and virtue signal during times of crisis. I play the role of multiple characters within my videos–e.g. Border Becky and Koncious Kyle–as a method of self-examination, seeking to encourage a deeper understanding of my own actions and their impact within my communities.
I use dye sublimation printing to transfer my imagery onto fleece blankets and then combine them with found polyester blankets.
The pictographic fleece blankets are inspired by San Marcos Blankets that were first manufactured in Central America and bear images of pop culture icons, homeland heroes, and picturesque landscapes. These blankets are passed down through generations, traveling across geographic and cultural borders, and are emblematic of the immigrant experience.
My soft sculptures and assemblages replicate the atmosphere of informal marketplaces found near the border including parking lots, roadsides, and swap meets. The mixed media installations mimic being wrapped up in fuzzy warm blankets, doom scrolling through images of the silly and banal next to images of violence, racism and war. This convergence serves as a poignant representation of American experiences of privilege and confusion.
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2024 Curators
Dr. Anita N. Bateman (she/her) is the Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), where she specializes in modern and contemporary African art and the art of the African diaspora. With over a decade of curatorial experience, she has collaborated on exhibitions, publications, and acquisitions that showcase the diversity and richness of primarily African diasporic artistic expressions and histories.
Bateman holds a Ph.D. in Art History and Visual Culture from Duke University, a Master’s in Art History from Duke University, and completed her undergraduate degree in Art History, graduating cum laude from Williams College. She has held curatorial positions at the RISD Museum, the Williams College Museum of Art, and the Nasher Museum of Art. Her academic research has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council. Bateman was the Fall 2022 ARCAthens Curatorial Fellow and a 2022 Graham Foundation Grantee for the publication "Where is Africa" (Center for Art, Research, and Alliances), co-edited with Emanuel Admassu. Her research interests include the history of photography, Black feminism/womanism, and the role of social media in activism and liberation work. She is passionate about engaging with artists, collectors, and audiences to foster dialogue around art and culture.
Leigh Arnold is the curator at the Nasher Sculpture Center and a scholar of Land art, Minimal, and Post-Minimal sculpture. In 2019, she curated Elmgreen & Dragset: Sculptures, the first major US museum exhibition of work by the artist duo, and The Four Fs: Family, Finance, Faith, and Friends by the French sound artist, Anne Le Troter, the artist’s first exhibition in North America and her first work in the English language. Starting in 2020, Arnold has collaborated with her Nasher colleagues to curate numerous solo presentations of works by North Texas-based artists as part of the Nasher Windows (2020) and Nasher Public series (2021-ongoing), including installations by Tamara Johnson, Leslie Martinez, Longhui Zhang, Ciara Elle Bryant, Karla Garcia, Vicki Meek, Shelby David Meier, Jer’Lisa Devezin, Christian Cruz, Liss LaFleur, Celia Eberle, Linnea Glatt, and Trey Burns.
In 2022, Arnold curated Lynda Benglis, featuring new and recent work by the artist, as well as the exhibition Matthew Ronay: The Crack, the Swell, an Earth. Arnold’s exhibition, Groundswell: Women of Land Art, which focused on underrepresented women artists active in the historical Land Art movement, opened in the fall of 2023 and was accompanied by a scholarly publication that significantly revises the male-dominated narrative of the movement.
She received her doctoral degree from the University of Texas at Dallas in 2016, where she wrote about Robert Smithson’s unfinished projects in Texas.
Coka Treviño is the Founder and Curator of The Projecto, an Austin-based organization fostering cultural connections between Latin America and the US. She is the Curator and Artistic Director at Big Medium, an Austin-based nonprofit art organization dedicated to advancing artists' careers. Additionally, she does Arts Programming at Soho House Austin. Her curatorial practice focuses on uplifting diverse artistic communities with an innovative and respectful approach to culture and contemporary social issues. Her work attempts to intertwine art, music, and social perspectives as often as possible, always with diversity, equity, and inclusion at the forefront of the projects.
Coka has worked with ArtPrize as a Curator and Outreach Specialist. She has co-curated events for the Blanton Museum and exhibitions for the Mexican American Cultural Center, the SXSW Art Program, and the Gallery at Austin’s Central Library. Previously, she supported the Exhibition department at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Monterrey, managed and curated exhibitions from the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León art collection in Monterrey, and served as a Curatorial Assistant for the Universal Forum of Cultures in Monterrey. She co-curated a concert with the Austin Symphony, highlighting women of color composers adding these pieces to the Symphony’s repertoire. She co-produced the project Translating Community History, a set of two books and hours of storytelling by Black and Latinx neighborhoods in Austin, which was recognized by the Preservation Merit Awards in 2023. The Mexican American Cultural Center co-sponsored and featured her Spanglish Series in 2020. She co-curated and managed Golden Hornet’s MXTX, a gender-balanced album, concert series, and open-source audio sample library to build cultural bridges between the US and Mexico.
About Tito’s Prize
The Tito’s Prize is a $15,000 award for one Austin-based artist, courtesy of a generous donation from Tito’s Handmade Vodka, the Austin-based spirits company, and facilitated by Big Medium. The award includes a solo exhibition in the Big Medium Gallery.
This annual opportunity is available to artists within a 17-mile radius of Austin. Artists working in any artistic media and stage in their career are eligible.
Previous Tito’s Prize Recipients
About Tito's Handmade Vodka
Tito’s Handmade Vodka was founded by a sixth-generation Texan, Bert “Tito” Beveridge. In the mid-nineties, on a plot of land in rural Austin, he built a 998 square foot shack, rigged a pot still with spare parts, and created Tito’s Handmade Vodka. Tito’s corn-based vodka is certified gluten-free. Tito’s Handmade Vodka is distilled and bottled by Fifth Generation, Inc. in Austin, Texas, and is available in Liter, 1.75L, 750ml, 375ml, 200ml, and 50ml sizes.
For more information, visit titosvodka.com.