Xavier Tavera

Mike was first introduced to Xavier by his spanish professor, Teresa Mesa Adamuz, when Xavier gave a presentation about his recent photography series to the class. Seeing Xavier’s Borderlands series — where he overlay communal infrastructure onto the border landscape, the wall itself almost totally absent — was where this project developed from. Xavier served as a pivotal mentor throughout the planning of En la Frontera del Arte.

Born in México City, Xavier has been living and making art in Minneapolis since 1996. He’s a professor at the University of Minnesota in the Photography and Moving Images department, where he received his MFA in 2017. His subjects frequently include Latinx communities in the Twin Cities, where he deals a lot with the intersections of race and identity, and the formation of culture in diasporic community.

His recent projects include AMVETS Post #5, a series of striking portraits of Mexican and Mexican-American military veterans living in St. Paul’s West Side, which was featured at the Minnesota History Center. His Borderlands series continues, as he travels the length of the border to provide for a range of borderlands aesthetics that allow us to imagine alternatives to a wall.

See more of Xavier’s work on his website, and follow him on Instagram for updates to the Borderlands series @taveraxavier

Photo credit for featured image: Elizabeth Foy Larsen for the University of Minnesota.