Blaffer Art Museum presents the first solo museum exhibition in the United States for Maria A. Guzmán Capron, "Forma Seductora," and first solo museum exhibition in Texas of artistic and life partners Nick Vaughan and Jake Margolin, "Wayfinding." 

Capron creates fantastical hybrid figures that explore converging forms of identity, culture, desire, and social exchange. Her self-described “beyond-human characters” are made from vivid, often recycled fabrics and paint, which are stitched together to fashion sinuous bodies in various states of motion and repose. Often these bodies verge on abstraction as swathes of pattern and pure color are employed by Capron to represent a flopping, folding arm or billowing hairstyle. The contours of individual figures are subsequently lost, or melt into one another, suggesting an effervescent spillage of personality or emotion—whether it be joy, despair, lust, or introspection. The exhibition will be on display through September 18.

Vaughan and Margolin (working collaboratively as “Nick & Jake”) have spent the majority of their artistic lives mining the habitually marginalized and unheralded histories of LGBTQ communities across the United States, and how the legacies of elements found and forgotten affect the contemporary queer experience. Their primary body of work, 50 States, is an ongoing, multi-decade series of installations and performances made in response to little-known pre-Stonewall queer histories from each state. This profound vocational endeavor engages critically with perceptions of history and identity as America’s views of sexuality evolve at an astonishing pace, while provoking deeply troubling social and legislative backlashes. The exhibition will be on display through October 9.