Víctor Mortales:
Language is a Place

Exhibition: January 17 - March 7, 2026

Opening Reception: Saturday, January 17, 2026 , 3:00-5:00 PM PSt

Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center is pleased to present Language is a Place, a solo exhibition by Oaxaca-based visual artist Víctor Mortales, on view January 17 through March 7, 2026, in the Mike Kelley Gallery. Curated by Hannah Sloan, this exhibition marks Mortales’ first solo presentation in the United States. An artist reception will take place on Saturday, January 17, from 3:00 to 5:00 PM.

Language is a Place exists at the intersection of literature and visual art, asking how language functions as both a bridge and a gap between inner thought and lived experience. The exhibition takes its conceptual starting point from the book Language is a Place: 14 Voices that Change Language to Explore Literature and Life in Different Contexts, edited by Gris Tormenta in Mexico. The publication gathers reflections by writers who explore the conditions, transformations, and possibilities of language across cultures and identities.

Translating this literary inquiry into material form, Mortales transforms written phrases into tactile works using wool, cotton, and mosquito net. Spanish and English texts become texture; words are reimagined as physical connections, woven into abstract forms that invite close looking and embodied engagement. Rather than illustrating language, the works ask viewers to experience it spatially and sensorially—as something that can be held, traversed, and felt.

The exhibition’s central series of textile works are uniformly sized at 16 x 14 inches and employ red thread against black and white textile surfaces. While the format remains consistent, the proportion of black within each piece shifts from work to work, suggesting the gradual rise of a tide or the encroaching movement of a sea. This slow visual progression introduces a temporal and spatial rhythm across the series, reinforcing the exhibition’s meditation on language as something that accumulates, advances, and reshapes the terrain it inhabits.