Los Encuentros
July 4–October 12, 2025
"Ballroom Marfa presents Los Encuentros, a group exhibition bringing together five leading Latinx artists: Justin Favela, Ozzie Juarez, Antonio Lechuga, Narsiso Martinez, and Yvette Mayorga. The artists share an abiding interest in the elevation of materials from everyday life. Los Encuentros will feature work newly-commissioned by Ballroom Marfa.
Favela's sculptural installations render massive scenes and oddly-scaled objects from cut tissue paper—the same material used in the construction of piñatas. Favela creates sculpture that questions the line between art and everyday life. 'The piñata style has become my signature. It’s something that I fought for a long time, because I didn’t want to be labeled as a Chicano or Latino or Brown artist. Now I see it as a way to be visible and for me to use the medium of piñata to express myself in a different way. The installations are about these spaces that I have had to navigate where I have to be the representative of my culture. Not only is [my work] about identity and nostalgia, it’s also about me navigating through the art world and showcasing my identity and the complexities of that.'
His work is both intended to challenge paradigms of the art world and to break down the metaphorical walls of an art space, creating an opportunity for collaboration, encouragement, and welcoming.
For Ballroom, Favela is paying homage to art world heroes Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, and Claes Oldenburg, among others while translating their work in to his own vernacular visual language."
Everything Must Go
August 4, 2025 — December 6, 2025
"After over a decade of working with prominent cultural institutions, the artist is taking a step back to reflect on how he wants to continue engaging with the art field. Everything Must Go: Justin Favela's Closeout Blowout Re-Grand Opening will be his final exhibition before entering a creative hiatus, offering a chance to pause, look back, and dream forward.
The installation is composed of over one hundred piñatas, each representing an exhibition from Favela's career. Surrounding them are vibrant dreamscape murals that visualize the artist's hopes, futures, and internal landscapes. In a gesture of collaboration and regional connection, Favela has hired piñata artisans from cities along the route between Las Vegas and Wichita. As he journeys to Kansas, he will stop in each city to pick up the handmade piñatas—each one a symbol of shared labor, movement, and community.
Through this expansive and reflective project, we invite our visitors to consider the content of Favela's work as well as the context in which it is presented. How do institutions shape cultural narratives? What roles do artists play in both resisting and participating in these structures? How might we reimagine the museum as a site for honest dialogue, radical joy, and collective transformation?"
Capilla de Maíz
Opens August 22, 2025
"In Capilla de Maíz (Maize Chapel), Favela draws together many sources and symbols of maize (corn), frequently called “yellow gold” in the Americas. Maize sustained Indigenous peoples and later European settlers, helping to grow the American agricultural economy. The shimmering gold-fringed walls combine two Mexican art practices, cartonería and the lavish Churrigueresque ornamentation of eighteenth-century Mexican Catholic churches.
The museum commissioned this site-specific installation for the Renwick Gallery’s Rubenstein Grand Salon to complement the exhibition State Fairs: Growing American Craft. Favela’s piñata corncobs highlight both the importance of maize in the formation of an American identity and the confluence of agriculture and craft traditions on display at state fairs."
August 21, 2025
