Pecos by Hope Mora

Pecos, Texas has for most of its life been a place in-between here and there.  It is flat, hot, and dusty with little geological dimension save for the scrub brush that dots the endless horizon.  The much-mythologized Pecos River cuts through the windswept plains east of town.  Follow that river and the Texas-Mexico border is just a few hours south.

Yet unlike many of the rural towns that have faded away in an ever-increasing urbanized age, Pecos sits on the Permian Basin — A massive geological formation stretching across parts of West Texas and Eastern New Mexico that is exceedingly rich with oil and gas.

Pecos, ostensibly in the middle of nowhere, is in fact part of the epicenter of the global energy market.  The town and its people provide the labor and support structures for this multi-billion dollar oil industry.

Hope is from Pecos and much of her family is still there.  She knows the rituals of life in the small town, has witnessed the economic shifts of the oil boom/bust cycle, and knows that it is the labor and resilience of the Latina/o population that forms the structural web of Pecos, as is true in many rural outposts from the oil fields of West Texas to the meatpacking towns of the Midwest.

Pecos consists of an installation of photographs made by Hope Mora in Pecos, Texas from 2018-2021. Her work is an ongoing exploration of how the dynamic between hard labor and resilience is sustained within communities as she looks at working life, regional culture, economy, and ideas of home. She documents how communities joyfully celebrate their lives through family, food, music, dance, and fashion using photography, video, sound, and text.

Hope Mora is a visual artist currently working and teaching art and journalism in West Texas. She has shown work at Mexic-Arte Museum, El Museo Buffalo, and The Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art among others. Hope received her MFA at The University at Buffalo and BFA from Texas State University.