Opening Reception: Guadalupe Najar: Buried in the Yard

October 23, 2026 - January 30, 2027

From DORF:
"Buried in the Yard re-imagines the material environments of yards through the power of childhood make-believe: the life, death, and rebirth of family and objects experienced within the confines of fences and private property. Inspired by the yards of my childhood on the East Side, this exhibition is a commemoration of domestic rearing through the aesthetic language of making-do found in immigrant and working-class homes. In a neighborhood experiencing rapid development and transformation, the visual expression of the yard is a place of direct confrontation between class respectabilities. Through the use of mixed media and found objects within real-life landscaping of gravel, plants and junk, I pay homage to the yard’s multigenerational expressions of congregation, collecting, and labor.
Our yards reflect not only personal tastes and functions, but broader community cultures of collecting and maintaining objects as expressions of identity and presence. This work is constructed through the gendered encompassment of a child raised in girlhood, whose access to the outside world is confined to the yard–to be protected, contained, and bordered. Where can bodily autonomy and agency be found in childhood when access to the outside world is limited and one's community is being transformed through seemingly uncontrollable forces?
In the processes of gentrification and community displacement, solace can be found in the imagined fantasies of a limitless mind—a child’s make-believe. It is vital that this work not be a direct replication of the material memories it commemorates, but rather an imagined fantasy of a past reality for a child; a place where faults are minimized and grief is explosive, ants are noble and trees carry messages in the wind.
Rooted in the personal histories and family mythmaking, the works repurpose objects from my yard to translate personal anecdotes held in objecthood. The dog, serpent, and horse connect personal narrative to larger semiotic contexts of girlhood, grief, and generational legacy.
Cross-culturally, the dog is considered a guardian of the realm of death, but they also guard our property. The symbol of the dog is repeated throughout the work to meditate on the rituals of grief and death practiced within the confines of our private yards. I made my first ofrenda for you, and when we moved away you remained buried in the garden. The loss of land is a wound larger than its material absence and exists in the bodies of those we love.
The serpent references divine feminine power within rebirth, family, and the sacred world. I question what cycles of violence my forebears have had to navigate and end within my own rearing; is it all one serpent that we have swallowed, a spine that holds us all? The serpent in my work represents multigenerational bonds, and our responsibility to continue or destroy tender or violent cycles within our families.
Finally, the horse reclaims my body in the process of gender and sexuality development in girlhood. The utilization of both the feminized body and horse body as discardable laborers, their agency bridled to be controlled, highlights parallels of objectification and power experienced in both bodies. Horse-girl monster I am heat and capability. Each of these symbols lives within a real and imagined landscape of the yard.
Inspired by the fractals of real landscapes and the flamboyancies of fantasy that exaggerate and minimize, this exhibition commemorates the material ruminations of alters, toolsheds, beanpits, gardens, basketballs, cookouts and linen closets; objecthoods found in the soils of the Holly neighborhood. I invite you into an Eastside make-believe, expanding where the fences of our yards can let us roam.
Kalle Duncan Curatorial Essay
Guadalupe Najar’s Buried in the Yard serves as a multidisciplinary reflection, tribute, and elegy on her East Austin upbringing in the early 2000s. Through expansive play with material, color, and animal symbolism, Najar seamlessly weaves cross-generational narratives of resourcefulness, labor, acceptance, and forgiveness through family dynamics and shifting urban landscapes. This body of work asks: How do we find grace and empathy for one another when reflecting on pressure points heightened by our rituals, culture, and societal “roles”? How does this grace create room to acknowledge transformation within our lineage?
A standout factor in Najar’s work is how she transforms often-discarded household items into intricately detailed, large-scale works. She takes particular interest in items you would find in a yard: Modelo bottles, tires, landscaping tools, and most notably, an oven. While the presence of these items in a yard may seem unconventional to some, they testify to elements of rasquachismo* found regularly in East Austin. Urban influx and gentrification in East Austin have directly combated this culture and spirit. Guadalupe’s work, through its subject matter and material play, conveys the tension created by these newly developed urban dwellings and their tenants’ encroachment upon land that has been historically occupied by Black and Brown residents and businesses.
Throughout this body of work, Guadalupe revisits girlhood from an adult perspective; such an examination can catalyze a rebirth or reconnection to girlhood itself. This response provides space to address the grief that comes forth when evaluating how girlhood is often lost, stolen, or bruised far too early in life. By confronting the impacts of gentrification and its subsequent siphoning of childhood homes, community and sites of memory, the work asks: to what extent are Black and Brown children “granted” childhood? What lengths do our families go to in order to protect our youth from the perspectives and stigma society imposes? How do we find forgiveness for the unfavorable effects these protections may have caused? This last question specifically connects to the artist’s presentation of her relationship to her yard throughout this work. While her brother had an entire neighborhood as a playground, her world was confined to her yard. This disparity between the geographical boundaries of brother and sister tells a story of the boundaries often implemented on young girls in the guise of their protection. While these lines may present potential traces of confinement, restriction also presents space for world-building, play, and creativity, reflecting the nature of rasquachismo that is ever-present in the striving for culture, celebration, and success in Latinx upbringings. Through mixed-media works, ceramics, found objects, and constructed landscapes, Guadalupe Najar invites us into her crafted world which tells a tale of unshakable culture, family connections, and girlhood.
*Rasquachismo is a Chicano aesthetic and cultural sensibility coined by San Antonio-based scholar Tomás Ybarra-Frausto in 1989. Rooted in resourcefulness, improvisation, adaptability, and “making do,” it describes an underdog– a poor or working-class perspective that transforms limited or discarded materials into expressions of creativity, identity, and resistance."

Reception October 23, 2026 | 7:00 - 10:00 pm

DORF (Zilker Location)
218 South Lamar Boulevard
Austin, Texas 78704
Get Directions