Born in Las Vegas, Justin Favela is renowned for his large-scale installations in cartonería, the traditional Mexican art of piñata making. Favela celebrates his heritage and identity while reflecting on themes of Latinidad, cultural appropriation, and art history. By reflecting on the intersections of tradition and contemporary culture, Favela challenges the ways Latine identity is represented, commodified, and misunderstood in North American cultural spaces, inviting the viewers to reconsider notions of authenticity, value, and artistic ownership.
This exhibition at the Ulrich Museum of Art marks a significant moment in Favela's career. 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?
By challenging traditional boundaries—for both the artist and the museum—this exhibition opens up new possibilities for collaboration, representation, and cultural exchange. It is both a celebration and a sendoff, a retrospective and a reinvention. As Favela steps away to rest and reimagine, we are left with one final, joyful explosion of color, critique, and care.
Organized by the Ulrich Museum of Art. Curated by Vivian Zavataro, Executive and Creative Director.
We are thankful to Peri Widner for being the lead sponsor of this exhibition.
