In Conversation with Xochi Solis for Hispanic/Latine Heritage Month

In honor of Hispanic/Latine Heritage Month, we talk with Xochi Solis about how collage offers a way to hold the many layers of her Tejana identity, from family and cultural heritage to history, place, and belonging. Read on for our conversation below.

Uprise Art: Tell us about yourself and your work.

Xochi Solis: My name is Xochi Solis and I’m a Tejana artist, community leader, and vinyl DJ born and raised in Austin, Texas here in the Borderlands between the US and México.

In all aspects of my work, I endeavor to explore place, memory, cultural identity, and the emotional texture of everyday life. My work often starts with a question about where I am presently, where I’m from culturally as the granddaughter of a Mexican immigrant, and what kinds of stories I can shape with the materials that find me.

UA: What kind of work do you create?

XS: My object making practice focuses on collage using a wild variety of materials including paint, hand-dyed and handmade papers, found images, and all kinds of printed ephemera.

I’m inspired by the colors, textures, and visual language of the places I move through, especially in Texas and México. Here the flora and fauna of La Frontera inspire me with their shapes, colors and textures and you’ll often see them in layers of my work pushed up next to snippets of bodies or buildings from magazines or travel brochures.

I think of each collage as a layered environment where personal memory, cultural history, landscape, and imagination can all exist together.

UA: How long have you been working this way?

XS: I’ve been working with paint & collage for over 20 years, but the language has developed slowly over time. I was initially drawn to collage because I loved its openness and accessibility. The opportunity to build an image through accumulation and intuition helped free me to build something that truly reflected all the layers within me.

As my practice grew, I began to understand that the materials themselves could help me reconcile the point of confluence & conflict that I often felt as a Tejana. The deconstruction inherent to collage was liberating and opened me up to share a story—albeit abstract— that I often don’t see reflected back to me through mainstream art or media.

I see my work as a beacon to others that might also be working towards understanding their origin story and ultimately, finding their place in the present and into the future.

UA: What is a typical day in your studio?

XS: A typical studio day usually starts slow with looking. Sometimes I am outside in the garden tending to my plants to gain inspiration, other times I am indoors pulling papers, revisiting works in progress, moving things around, to let the materials guide me. Sometimes I begin with paint or color; other days, it’s a photograph or a scrap of paper that opens up an idea for me.

I like to leave room for wandering. I might be cutting, painting, dyeing paper, making a big mess, or sitting with a piece for a while before I make the next decision. Almost always there is sound in the studio—my current rotation includes my friend Jazmin’s NTS Radio show, Como La Flor. It has the perfect mix of rolas romanticas to put me in an easy, tender mood to create.

UA: What moments in your process do you enjoy most?

XS: One of the moments I love most in my process is collecting materials. Visiting used bookstores, thrift shops, or pulgas is technically research and material sourcing, but it’s also a way of paying attention to how a place tells stories about itself through material and media. Each time I revisit these treasures in my studio, I am flooded with the memory and try and move that energy into the work. When seemingly incompatible materials from disparate places suddenly begin to belong together it feels like world building.

UA: What does “heritage” mean to you?

XS: Heritage, to me, is both what we inherit and what we actively choose to carry forward. It can live in family stories, food, language, music, materials, and the ways we gather with one another. It is not always something that arrives whole and sometimes it presents itself in glimpses and snippets.  As the descendant of immigrants, the cord connecting me to my Mexican heritage has sometimes been thin and it has taken a lot of work and patience to re-center it as a part of my present moment.

As a Tejana artist, I think about heritage as a living relationship—one shaped by migration, memory, loss, joy, and ongoing curiosity. I’m interested in honoring what I know while staying open to the questions, absences, and possibilities that remain. My heritage is not static, but something that I shape and share with the world through my art constantly.

UA: How do you think about culture and identity in relation to your work?

XS: Culture and identity are central to my work, but I don’t think of them as fixed categories. I think of them as layered, shifting, and deeply connected to time and place. My work often reflects my experiences as a Tejana artist living and working in Austin, Texas, my family’s Mexican heritage, and the ways identity is shaped by history, movement, and belonging.

Collage feels like a natural form for that. It allows different materials, references, and moments in time to coexist without needing to flatten them into one simple story. I hope the work makes room for complexity—for people to recognize something of their own histories while also encountering another perspective.

A great book I recently read that helped shape my perspective is ¡Somos Tejanas! Chicana Identity and Culture in Texas. Highly recommend!

Published September 2026

Photography by Hali Martin