Part 2 of a 4 Part Film & Video Series Presented by the 2024 Texas Biennial in Partnership with Future Front
Join us in The Jones Center’s Community Room on Sunday, November 10 from 3–4:30P for Closed World: Exercise of Remembrance and Memory, the second in a four-part film series presented in partnership with Future Front and the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston as part of the 2024 Texas Biennial.
Closed World, co-curated by Innocent Ekejiuba and Erika Mei Chua Holum, is a four-part film program including works by an international roster of contemporary artists designed as four exercises in healing. The film series is presented in conjunction with Makeshift Memorials, Small Revolutions - an exhibition at the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston that is co-organized with KADIST - San Francisco and offered as part of the 2024 Texas Biennial: The Last Sky.
For these satellite screenings of the Closed World programs at The Contemporary Austin, the program’s curators have partnered with Future Front's Founding Director Jane Hervey, who additionally curated works by Texas-based artists appearing in The Front Festival's annual Independent Film Showcase.
Films included in part-two, Closed World: Exercise of Remembrance and Memory, include Relics (2024) by Texas-based artists Ana Trevino & Mark Menjivar alongside the following works:
Later Closed World screenings at The Contemporary Austin - Jones Center offered as part of this series include:
All programs are free to attend and include admission to view our current exhibitions Carl Cheng: Nature Never Loses and HOST: Katarina Janečková Walshe.
For accommodations, please email [email protected] in advance.
Closed World consists of four short-film programs, or exercises, encompassing the themes of grief, memory / remembrance, resilience, and rebuilding / recovery. Each program is designed as a ‘Closed World’ - or as a generative system formed through synthetic naturalism, where the habitable conditions of nature are replicated within spaces of the home, theater, or gallery space.
Closed World seeks to examine the earth as a whole - as a complete and interconnected system - which can be shaped into architecture as part of an integrated system derived from nature in the built environment. A closed world is built and unbuilt through the progression of the four-part exercises in this film program and the community taking part; it is not enough to talk about healing or grief, we must all go through the complete healing process as a community and ensure rebirth happens on a communal scale.
Erika Mei Chua Holum is the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Associate Curator at the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston and is one of three curators of the 2024 Texas Biennial. Recent projects at the Blaffer Art Museum include Makeshift Memorials, Small Revolutions with KADIST San Francisco (2024), and solo exhibitions with Cian Dayrit (2024), Saif Azzuz (2025), and Ja’Tovia Gary (2026).
Innocent Ekejiuba is a PhD student at Howard University and a Cultural Researcher. He serves as an assistant professor of Art and Cultural Management in the Creative Enterprise Leadership International Graduate Program at Pratt Institute. In 2020, he founded The Drill, a non-profit organization dedicated to building a sustainable African art ecosystem by providing early and mid-career African artists with tools for sustainable practices.
Homegrown in Austin, Future Front is an award-winning cultural space and exhibition series—with women and LGBTQ+ creatives at the front. As a 501c3 arts and culture nonprofit, we produce community-led exhibitions, markets and festivals, amplifying independent artists and creatives across disciplines in Central Texas. Welcoming 20,000+ visitors per year, our programs and partnerships invite the public to dream of a future where creativity, curiosity and intersectional design thrive in Texas, where we see ourselves and our cultures reflected in our communities.
The Texas-based filmmakers featured in Closed World have been curated by Future Front's Founding Director Jane Hervey from The Front Festival's Independent Film Showcase, which is annually hosted at The Contemporary Austin — Laguna Gloria. To learn more about The Front Festival and Future Front, head to futurefronttexas.org.
Ana Treviño (b. 1984) is a visual artist and educator living and working in Austin, TX. Her practice bends the rules of filmmaking and is informed by cultural histories. She uses a feminist lens to think about the concept of borders, whether visible, invisible, or blurred. Her connection to the U.S./Mexico border deeply influences her work and the stories she engages with. Through video installation and performance, she explores how she can reinvent subjugated narratives. Her most recent work involves deconstructing and analyzing the mother figure in media, literature, and art. She has been invited to lecture for the Capstone Lecture Series in Eastern Washington University, led graduate workshops at the University of Texas at Austin, and worked with underrepresented youth in the greater Austin area. Her writing has been published in Gender/Sexuality/Italy, a peer reviewed journal focusing on gendered identities. Films she has collaborated in have screened at Sundance Film Festival and South by Southwest. She received her MFA in Art and Technology from the University of Florida and a BS in Television and Film Production from Florida International University.
Mark Menjívar is a San Antonio based artist and Associate Professor in the School of Art and Design at Texas State University. His art practice primarily consists of creating participatory projects while being rooted in photography, oral history, archives, and social action. He attended McLennan Community College, holds a BA in Social Work from Baylor University and an MFA in Social Practice from Portland State University.
Mark has engaged in projects at venues including the Rothko Chapel, Eastern State Penitentiary, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, FOTOFEST, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Haverford College, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, The Puerto Rican Museum of Art and Culture, Sala Diaz, Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum and the Krannert Art Museum.
Mark is a long-time artistic collaborator with the Texas After Violence Project, a public memory archive that fosters deeper understandings of the impacts of state violence. He is also a member of Borderland Collective, which utilizes collaborations between artists, educators, youth, and community members to engage complex issues and build space for diverse perspectives, meaningful dialogue, and modes of creation around border issues.