Two Dallas art exhibitions — “Heard” and “The Range” — are challenging traditional notions of the cowboy.
One came together in barely six months, the other was five years in the making. They both opened last month and run until July 29. You can see “Heard” at the Daisha Board Gallery in West Dallas and “The Range” at Gallery 12.26 in the Design District.
For Tramaine Townsend , the artist behind “Heard,” this project was born from a script. Five years ago, the Houston-born, Dallas-based visual artist was writing a movie about a Black cowboy. Townsend said the research for that project fostered an interest in the Black cowboy lifestyle and identity.
“I knew that there was a deeper side of that culture that people really need to resonate with and feel,” Townsend said. “There’s a beauty to it that people just haven’t really paid much attention to. … I’ve been here my whole life and I know these stories need to be told.”
The start of Townsend’s project five years ago coincides with what “The Range” co-curator Ari Myers sees as a popular resurgence of the cowboy.
“There has been a renewed interest in the cowboy figure since around 2018 with shows like Yellowstone coming on TV and with Lil Nas X and [the song] ‘Old Town Road.’ These pop culture things have brought the cowboy figure more into the contemporary imagination,” she said.
Myers, who is based in Taos, N.M., curated “The Range” exhibition along with sisters Hannah and Hilary Fagadau, who own Gallery 12.26. Hannah said the idea for a cowboy-related exhibition is something her sister has wanted to do for a long time. It’s a project inspired by the sisters’ Dallas origins.
“We’re very proud that we have a few Dallas-based artists on our roster,” Fagadau said. “It’s exciting for us to be able to put these Dallas artists in the context of the contemporary global art world. They have this opportunity to be in conversation and be shown amongst artists from outside Texas.”
“The Range” is no exception. The exhibition includes 11 artists of different backgrounds and identities, including Dallas-based ceramic artist Karla García. Myers talked about an emphasis on diversity with the artists and their work in putting together the exhibition.
“Our show has women artists, queer artists, Asian American artists, Black artists, it’s really a wide range of folks who are interested in seeing how they might fit into or how they relate to the myth of the cowboy,” Myers said.
Townsend says Dallas shaped the artist that he has become. Fittingly, most of the photographs that are now part of “Heard” were taken in Dallas or Fort Worth across the last five years.
Myers expressed a desire to challenge the idea of the cowboy that was built by Hollywood in the last century. She says recent figures like John Wayne and the Marlboro Man have taken a historically diverse origin and made it almost exclusively white.
Nickolas Gaines, the curator of “Heard,” expressed a similar desire to reaffirm that diverse history with Townsend’s exhibition.
Many people don’t know about the prevalence of Black cowboys in Texas in the 1850s, he said. “Even the term cowboy. It goes back to enslaved Black men being told ‘Go check on that cow, boy’... the history of Black people in Texas, as cowboys, that’s the heart of this exhibition.”
Details
“The Range” runs through July 29 at Gallery 12.26, 150 Manufacturing St., Suite 205, Dallas, gallery1226.com/the-range
“Heard: Photographs and Films by Tramaine Townsend, 2018–2023″ runs through July 29 at Daisha Board Gallery — West, 2111 Sylvan Ave., Dallas, daishaboardgallery.com/tramaine-townsend-heard
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