Welcome to Quick Q+Art, a series featuring the artists behind our First Friday Exhibitions. Today, we're talking with Houston-based new media artist Chris Wicker, whose work is featured in our January 2026 exhibition, Lone Star: New Takes on the 28th State.
Chris Wicker makes art that feels like falling into a YouTube rabbit hole at 2 a.m.—except it’s intentional, and somehow, profound.
Raised in Texarkana, Chris collects the overlooked scraps of early 2000s pop culture: Power Rangers, flashes of NASCAR, the soft static of old screens that once filled living rooms and bedrooms. In his studio, these fragments are pulled apart and pieced back together, layered and looped until they start to blur into something new: a flicker of memory, a pulse of collective experience, a quiet question about what it means to have grown up with video always humming in the background.
These days, Chris is settled in Houston, working as exhibitions manager for FotoFest. He talks about his process as a kind of daily practice, making odd, sometimes messy things, and letting them exist as they are. It’s a humble way to describe work that’s really about the constant flood of images and sounds, about the ways video seeps into us, lingers, and quietly shapes the way we see the world.
In Today’s Quick Q+Art…
Chris Wicker discusses why he stopped running from his Texarkana roots, how NASCAR and Baptist church culture became tools for examining Southern white identity, and why making weird stuff in his Houston studio is both practice and survival.
How has Texas shaped your work, and what aspects of the state's identity do you find most compelling beyond the usual stereotypes?
Chris Wicker: My current body of work, mainly influenced by my upbringing in East Texas, examines the harmful normalities of Southern white culture. With this in mind, I’m pulling from a lot of properties like NASCAR, professional wrestling, and my experiences with the Baptist church. For me, those entities and items like denim, camouflage, and an overwhelming pressure to “Fear God” are inherently Texan. I encounter them through social media clips, trips to the grocery store, and road trips across the eastern portion of the state. Therefore, those characteristics I’ve come to know as “Texas” influence almost every decision in my practice.
There is a sense of intensity or conviction that I both admire and fear in Texas. Whether it's devotion to Buc-ee’s or to the Lord, Texas has an “all or nothing” personality. The admiration stems from an appreciation for the ability to be so passionate about whatever the subject may be. The fear is then when that admiration gets to the point of full-blown obsession.
What impact has your upbringing and cultural background had on your work, and how has it influenced your approach and aesthetic?
CW: Growing up in the church amongst the pine trees has really just begun to come into my practice. For a portion of my art-making career, I wanted to disassociate myself with where I was from and how I was raised, until about two years ago. I was living at home with my parents and really began to explore NASCAR and what I found interesting about it. By taking my influences from my upbringing, I have been able to critique and speak on harmful systems that are present within these pockets of media that I feel are untouched. Likewise, these critiques I’m making through my own corner of the world connect to larger conversations that are occurring on a grander scale within the country. So, my time growing up in Texarkana, TX, has given me a visual language to then critique harmful systems in Texas and the world at large.
What are the advantages and challenges of building an art practice in Texas compared to coastal art hubs, and how does regional identity influence how your work is received?
CW: Texas has a great support system for artists, and I think that we want to see art. I have seen murals, museums, DIY art spaces, galleries, performances, etc., all throughout my art career here in Texas. There is always something happening and a group of people supporting it. That is an amazing plus to having an art practice in Texas. The challenge arises from making sure others in the country know what Texas has to offer.
With that in mind, I think about where I am frequently. When I’m putting together proposals for open calls, I’m thinking about how my work can be received in venues across the country. My work critiquing brand idolization through a semi-niche opening evocation given at a NASCAR race in 2011 does not have as much impact as it would in the southern region of the U.S. There is already an understanding present just through the southern drawl of the pastor’s opening address. Therefore, my work is heavily influenced by my placement in Texas.
What advice do you wish you could give your younger artistic self?
CW: Keep making weird shit.
Chris Wicker: Website | Instagram | Lone Star: New Takes on the 28th State
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. All images/videos published with permission of Chris Wicker.