XAVIER TAVERA
UNSETTLED


2.6.26 - 4.22.26

Wall Text

Xavier Tavera’s Unsettled begins with the civil unrest that shook Minneapolis and the nation in January 2026. In vivid street scenes, he depicts protesters, state perpetrators of violence, and the material traces of urban upheaval.

  • Xavier Tavera’s Unsettled begins with the civil unrest that shook Minneapolis and the nation in January 2026. In vivid street scenes, he depicts protesters, state perpetrators of violence, and the material traces of urban upheaval.

    These documentary images are given an unexpected context: Tavera mounts them onto photographs of pastoral Minnesota landscapes that he has made over the past decade, across all four seasons. The quiet, expansive vistas visually outweigh the urgency and noise of the streets, casting the events of the siege against an enduring, seemingly tranquil ground.

    Across the series, Tavera layers his artistic and personal experiences onto broader questions drawn from the history of photography and the land, particularly the role photography has played in establishing standard myths of equilibrium found in the interior Midwest.

    Unsettled sustains these landscapes in familiar narratives of American stability and prosperity: the terrain appears sublime and cultivated, Minnesota’s natural abundance fully on view—settled in all seasons.

    Tavera disrupts the rural with an opposing image from without: local scenes of intense state violence following the arrival of a masked force of 3,000 heavily armed federal agents. Taken together, urban and agrarian alike read as borderlands far from official crossings. Added to the high profile killings that followed, waves of repression rippled through Latin communities in the Twin Cities, including businesses and collaborators with whom Tavera has longstanding relationships as an artist, neighbor, and citizen.

    Unsettled also advances a more speculative meditation on how land absorbs human action, energy, and trauma. In each collage, the juxtaposition of landscape and unrest suggests that Minnesota’s terrain remains, in fact, unsettled. The tensions Tavera records are at once broadly legible and deeply entangled in specific histories, some now hidden from view. Together, the works contribute to a growing visual record of an ongoing imperial project within the United States—one that turned inward in a modern, expansive and terrifying way in Minneapolis in 2026.

    For Tavera, the shock of this recent trauma will also, in time, be taken up by the land and transformed into other material and energy, perhaps carrying new meanings long after current witnesses are gone. For the present, however, the images in Unsettled insist on a simple claim: the land does not forget. Minneapolis does not forget.

Artist Bio

Xavier Tavera has spent the past three decades documenting the stories of the Latin American diaspora in the United States. His practice moves fluidly between social engagement and documentary photography, creating images that reframe the myths and imaginaries shaping the Americas.

Tavera’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in galleries and museums across Germany, Scotland, Mexico, Chile, Uruguay, Switzerland, Portugal, Greece, and China. His pieces are held in major collections, including the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Plains Art Museum, Minnesota Museum of American Art, Weisman Art Museum, and the National Museum of Mexican Art.

Since 2020, Tavera has served as Assistant Professor of Art at Carleton College. He holds an MFA from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and has received numerous honors, including the Minnesota State Arts Board Legacy Grant and fellowships from the McKnight, Jerome, and Bronica foundations. Tavera is based in Minneapolis and hails from Mexico City, where he maintains deep connections as an artist.