San Antonio City Attorney Removed Video Work by Queer Chicana Artist, Calling It ‘Obscene’

In a move that some have said harkens back to the culture wars of the late 1980s and early 1990s, a city official has pulled an artwork from an exhibition on the grounds that it is “obscene.” San Antonio City Attorney Andy Segovia made the decision to remove a video work by Oakland-based artist Xandra Ibarra from an exhibition of contemporary Chicanx art at the Centro de Artes, which is under the control San Antonio’s Department of Arts & Culture.

Hours before the show, titled “XicanX: New Visions,” opened on February 13, Segovia notified the art center that the work had to be removed for its “obscene content.” Ibarra’s piece, titled Spictacle II: La Tortillera (2014), was to appear in a black-box viewing space in the show alongside other artists’ work, and a description nearby it was also scrubbed of Ibarra’s name and any mention of her art.

Ibarra’s performances and artworks have appeared at numerous international venues, including the Broad museum in Los Angeles, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art in New York, El Museo de Arte Contemporañeo in Bogotá, and ExTeresa Arte Actual in Mexico City. In August, she had a solo exhibition at the Knockdown Center in Queens.

In a letter sent to San Antonio’s mayor, Ron Nirenberg, the National Coalition Against Censorship expressed concern about the work’s removal “because of your apparent discomfort with its unconventional viewpoint on representations of sexuality and the challenge it presents to gender stereotypes.” The letter continues, “This act of censorship flies in the face of the city’s First Amendment obligations.”