A place for the in-between

A neighborhood store can hold more than merchandise. It can carry familiar colors, devotional objects, memories, and the feeling of being recognized. In Victor “Marka27” Quiñonez’s exhibition Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá, a reimagined botánica brings those associations into the gallery. It is one way into a body of work about belonging when a single national identity does not feel sufficient.

Boston University’s introduction describes paintings, textiles, sculptural objects, and a soundscape brought together by curator Kate Fowle. Quiñonez combines influences from graffiti and hip-hop with Mexican and Indigenous visual traditions. The title, translated there as “Not From Here, Not From There,” invites a question about who gets to define where someone belongs. The exhibition first appeared at BU in autumn 2025. Explore the exhibition’s original introduction.

Some of its objects are deliberately unsettling. A paleta, the familiar frozen treat, becomes a resin sculpture containing handcuffs. The sweetness of the form and the restraint embedded within it pull in different directions. Local arts publication Glasstire identifies this work as Resin Paleta – Limon ‘Guilty’ Flavor, part of the artist’s I.C.E. Scream series. Its report includes photographs that help readers see how these objects sit alongside the exhibition’s other imagery. Encounter the work in Glasstire’s reporting.

The University of North Texas opened the exhibition in February 2026, then closed it within days. The artist told Glasstire that students alerted him to paper covering the gallery windows before the university formally informed him that its loan agreement had been terminated. For the intended audience, the change was immediate: a space that had offered an encounter no longer did.

Later reporting revealed more of the decision process. Hyperallergic reviewed records first reported by journalist Adam Schrader. In the messages it describes, UNT’s president and provost initially discussed removing selected pieces; the discussion then turned to taking down the entire exhibition. Those communications move the story beyond an unexplained closure, but they do not establish that a particular outside official ordered it. Reporting on the internal messages.

That distinction matters. An institution can respond to anticipated consequences as well as direct demands. The records raise questions about what university leaders expected and whose reactions they considered. They do not, by themselves, settle those questions.

A subsequent account supplies part of the university’s explanation. KERA and the Denton Record-Chronicle reported on March 16 that an email from provost Michael McPherson to faculty cited concerns about disruption to education and effects on university operations and resources. Their report says university spokespeople did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but the faculty email is an institutional rationale and belongs in the account. Anticipating disruption and documenting an actual incident are different things; this research has not established that an incident occurred. Read the later reporting and the reproduced email.

The work now has another audience. UC Santa Cruz’s Institute of the Arts and Sciences presents Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá as a current exhibition running from October 2, 2026, through March 7, 2027. Its page includes an installation view and public gallery hours. That establishes a new presentation of the exhibition; it does not independently document every event announced for opening day. The new venue’s current exhibition page.

A later venue cannot reproduce every encounter lost at the earlier one. It does, however, keep the work in circulation and give another audience the opportunity to consider it. Following that journey lets us ask about both institutional decisions and the art that continues beyond them.

A question to carry forward: How can we distinguish a decision made in response to direct pressure from one made in anticipation of it, and what evidence would let us do so fairly?

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