Simon Silva: Madre Patria presents a personal and documentary look at Oaxaca, Mexico, through the eyes of a Houston-based photographer tracing his own roots. On view from May 21 to June 14, 2026, the exhibition follows Silva’s 2024 trip to Aquiles Serdán, where family ties, local ritual and daily life shaped the series and its accompanying zine.
Silva describes the visit as his first time outside the country, but also as an experience that felt familiar from the start. That feeling of recognition runs through the work. Rather than treating Oaxaca as a distant subject, he photographs it as a place connected to memory, family and inheritance. His images focus on the life of the pueblo, including the festival honoring Señor Santiago, where his family joined neighbors in preparing tamales for the celebration. The result is a body of work that pays attention to small gestures, communal labor and the routines that hold a place together.
Raised on Houston’s southwest side, Silva brings a bicultural perspective to the project. His work often centers Black and Brown communities, with an emphasis on portraiture, street scenes and candid observation. In Madre Patria, that approach extends into questions of belonging and representation. The photographs do not present Latinx life as a single image or story. Instead, they show a community through lived detail: a gathering, a ritual, a face, a street corner, a shared task.
Curated by Areli Navarro Magallón, HCP Exhibitions & Programs Coordinator, the exhibition sits within Silva’s larger practice, which looks at race, spirituality and beauty through documentary photography. As the son of a Mexican immigrant and a BIPOC artist working from personal experience, he frames the work as both record and counter-narrative. What comes through most clearly is a desire to show Latinx life with care, accuracy and a sense of proximity.
Madre Patria holds on to that balance between the intimate and the collective, using photography to preserve a place that feels both newly seen and deeply known.
Image: © Simon Silva, courtesy of the Houston Center for Photography.
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