Hooks-Epstein Galleries will open its 2026-2027 Art Season with "Sanctuary," an exhibition of new paintings and drawings by Houston-based artist Angel Castelán.

"Sanctuary" explores the many forms refuge can take: a relationship, a memory, a place, or a connection to one’s cultural roots. While informed by personal experience, Castelán’s works resist a singular narrative. Quiet acts of care between partners, domestic rituals, and culturally significant places unfold as interconnected fragments, inviting viewers to decide whether they are witnessing a tragedy, a transformation, or enduring love.

As a queer Mexican American artist, Castelán draws from personal photographs, memory, and Nahua cosmologies to consider how identity is shaped through both chosen and inherited histories. Locations such as Xochimilco become more than settings; they serve as repositories of memory, ancestry, and belonging, where lived experience and cultural inheritance converge.

"Sanctuary" suggests that refuge is not always something that is discovered, but created through intimacy, memory, places, and the stories that are inherited, created, and preserved.

The exhibition will continue through October 3.