Q+Art is a series featuring the artists behind our First Friday Exhibitions. Today, we're talking with San Antonio-based artist Suzy González, whose work is featured in our January 2026 exhibition, Lone Star: New Takes on the 28th State.
Suzy González’s art doesn’t just hang on a wall. It lingers in the air, settles on your tongue, and seems to grow straight out of the Texas soil. Raised between the mesquite and cactus of South and Central Texas, Suzy describes herself as “a Xicanx and Tejanx artist, curator, zine-maker, writer, and educator.” Her work pulses with the memory of her ancestors and the steady beat of her activism.
In her Plantcestors series—of which "Diana" appears in the Lone Star exhibition—Suzy pays tribute to the plants that have kept our ancestors alive and still look after us now. Food, medicine, shelter, even the air: it all comes back to what grows from the ground. Each portrait in the series depicts artists, activists, and culture workers from present-day Yanaguana, the original Indigenous name for San Antonio, incorporating natural plant materials that hold ancestral, cultural, or personal significance for each sitter. Making these pieces is a hands-on process: Suzy photographs, talks, gardens, forages, presses, dries, glues, and paints, symbolizing the conversation between people and land.
She calls her approach mestizx media, a phrase that feels as handmade as her art. Suzy layers maíz, corn husks, and whatever plant-based materials she can gather into portraits that seem to breathe. “They recall Mesoamerican beliefs that our very beings are created from maíz,” she says. For her, these choices aren’t just about how something looks—they’re a way of pushing back. “Accepting mixedness is also about embracing queerness and the fluid nature of identities that reject constructed binaries,” she explains. Each piece feels like a small rebellion, rooted in the soil and shaped by the shifting lines between identity, place, and land.
In Today’s Q+Art…
Suzy González opens up about Texas’s complex influence on her work, the power of community-empowered spaces, and the importance of making art “for yourself as well.”
How has Texas shaped your work, and what aspects of the state's identity do you find most compelling beyond the usual stereotypes?
Suzy González: Texas's history of activism runs deep and continues to be prominent in BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities. We are not the minorities that we have been labeled as, and many of us have been on this land much longer than Texas has existed. Our ancestors faced many hardships in the face of settler colonialism, and we continue to progress our rights forward. I find it important to uplift those doing the work while they’re alive, as recognition too often goes unnoticed. My series Plantcestors does this while honoring the plants that nourish us, whether physically, emotionally, or spiritually.
What impact has your upbringing and cultural background had on your work, and how has it influenced your approach and aesthetic?
SG: I’m a Xicanx and Tejanx, and I have roots in many areas within South and Central Texas. I strive to reconnect with the land, her medicine, and the important teachings our ancestors had extensive knowledge of. I combine practices of gardening, herbalism, and veganism in my work, experimenting with natural materials combined with painting materials. I coined the term “mestizx media,” reclaiming the “mestizo” colonial caste label and defining it as material originating from the region(s) of the artist’s ancestors. So, when I work with corn husks and oil paint, for example, I recognize which have Indigenous and European origins, and these concepts are naturally embedded in the work.
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?
SG: If we think beyond borders, we are able to see that the art world(s) we live within are not so distant from one another—we have individual, but also collective human experiences. I’ve shown my work coast to coast and don’t feel limited in doing so. There are some misfortunes, like Chicano art in Texas historically getting less recognition than West Coast Chicano art; however, there are some amazing curatorial activists doing the work to make sure more artists are given the credit they deserve. Conservative states tend to create conservative-leaning art spaces; however, this restriction leads to the formation of community-empowered spaces of collective care and creative freedom.
What advice do you wish you could give your younger artistic self?
SG: Alongside the work that the public may see, it’s okay to keep making art for yourself as well.
View ‘Lone Star: New Takes on the 28th State’
Our January 2026 First Friday Exhibition features work by Suzy González.
Exhibition | Curator’s Statement | First Friday Exhibitions
Follow Suzy González
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. All photos published with permission of Suzy González; featured artwork: “Diana” (detail).