Evita Tezeno
Saturday Night at the Hollywood Theater, 2024
Acrylic, mixed media collage, and vintage buttons on canvas
96 x 72 in (243.8 x 182.9.6 cm)
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce our participation in The Armory Show 2025, with a solo presentation of new works by Evita Tezeno in Booth 419. The fair opens with a VIP preview on Thursday, September 4 and runs through Sunday, September 7, 2025 at the Javits Center in New York City.
In Evita Tezeno: Summertime and the Cotton is High, new collage paintings celebrate the beauty, resilience, and joy of Black life in public spaces—parks, beaches, and the wide-open landscapes where community gathers and thrives.
Tezeno’s visionary collages honor memories that are sometimes forgotten—her family picnicking in the park and sunny beaches, couples enjoying intimate moments in nature, a young woman riding a bicycle, a lady surrounded by birds, and friends gathering outside the local movie theater. Bringing together vibrantly colored, hand-painted, patterned papers and heirloom buttons, each canvas becomes a space where presence is not questioned but celebrated, where joy and community is part of the landscape itself.
Tezeno’s compositions remind us that representation in these environments matters—that Black life reflected in open, green, and blue spaces shows belonging in spaces that were once segregated and were too often
difficult to access. These powerful autobiographical works are both celebration and invitation: to gather, to breathe, to belong, and to find joy and kinship with nature and with each other.
Evita Tezeno (b. Port Arthur, TX, lives and works in Dallas, TX) is a visionary American collage artist whose vibrant, mixed-media works layer richly patterned hand-painted papers and heirloom buttons to craft scenes that celebrate Black life, joy, and everyday connections — infused with personal memories of South Texas and deep influences from artists like Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, and William H. Johnson.
Her works are held in the collections of the African American Museum of Dallas; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; Figge Art Museum, Davenport, IA; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Perez Art Museum, Miami, FL; Embassy of the Republic of Madagascar; The Bunker Artspace, Palm Beach, FL; and El Espacio 23, Miami, FL; as well as numerous prominent private collections. Her work will be included in the exhibition "Solace and Sisterhood" at the David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland from Sept. 11 – Dec. 10, 2025.
