The Strangest Fruit 9

About the Art and the Artist.

The song Strange Fruit made famous by jazz singer Billie Holiday was a poetic protest to lynchings of African Americans from the time of slavery to the present. South Texas native Vincent Valdez applies the title to a series of nine paintings depicting young Latinx men suspended mid-air by an invisible rope. Valdez recalls the violence against Texans of Mexican heritage while also commenting on the symbolic nooses that face many of America’s youth.

“My aim is to incite public remembrance and to impede distorted realities that I witness, like the social amnesia that surrounds me.” – Vincent Valdez