Michael Anthony García's site-specific installation, sit with it, invites viewers to take time to smell the (not so) rosey state of the world to consider our complicity and potential paths toward alleviating the suffering in the world around us. Pulling from the only silver lining we walked away with from the COVID-19 Pandemic, García's work asks the viewer to take time to put our attention to our position within the community and just sit with it.
ARTIST:Michael Anthony García is an Austin-based interdisciplinary artist originally from El Paso, Texas, holding dual Mexican and U.S. citizenship. His work spans photography, video, sculpture, installation, performance, and poetry. He earned an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and co-founded the Los Outsiders curatorial collective. His work has appeared in the 2011 and 2024 Texas Biennials and at institutions including the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Experimental Action, The Contemporary Austin, SoundSpace at the Blanton Museum, El Museo de la Ciudad de México, and ThreeWalls in Chicago. As a curator, García has led projects for Mexic-Arte Museum, Texas State University Galleries, and Fusebox Festival.
OPENING RECEPTION: September 22nd 8:30-9:30pm The reception is free and open to the public.The reception follows the 7:30pm performance of JK’s Just Kidding Variety Hour* VIEWING: The 4th Floor is the lobby space of the Trinity St Playhouse. The work will be on display September 22nd 2025-January 3rd 2026 in The 4th Floor Gallery.
The exhibit is available to view by appointment, email reservations.tsp@gmail.com to plan a visit, or attend a play at TSP trinitystreetplayers.com
el corazón en la manga 3
manipulated clothes, sewing pins, house paint
20” X 20”
$800
Point the barrel upwards in celebration
only takes you out with gravity
and grazes your
gods.
Point it at the ground
and you spoil the soil and
make a dent that will
eventually trip your step
and pull you to the ground
too.
el corazón en la manga 1
manipulated clothes, sewing pins, house paint
20” X 20”
$800
Take it from me, Come and
Take It, this sorrow,
this mistrust
those complicit tears,
that flow down so many
streets in amongst debris
detritus, mix with dust,
mud up steps that can
tread on us all.
​
el corazón en la manga 2
manipulated clothes, sewing pins, house paint
20” X 20”
$800
All these papercuts want
is your perception.
All they need is to nag at you,
and wear you down, c
ommunication weaponized
to make you aware
of the edges of reality and
what you did or didn't
do about it, in reality.
códices 1, 2 y 3
tracing paper, marker, t shirt, hardware
19" X 24"
$100 eac
​
Let's cleanse blood of
diseases and not of
those genes,
those of
which you're not
worthy of of of
because beauty also
can contaminate
and not that you
necessarily deserve it,
but it does no one any good
keeping it inside.
​
​
I may be a real pacifist,
but I will really pass a fist...
I think.
​
​​
As a child I solved world peace
with a fistful
of M and Ms
Su Casa
collaged, children's books
20”X30”
$150
In its white surface
I can only see my reflection
being kept out of the
reality
it purports to embody
all our dreams
​
yet all I can see is
my own reflection
on its surface
​
me looking into my own eyes
because no one else who lives there will​
These Arms
collaged, children's books, school materials
20”X30”
$150
Comfort us
hold us in spaces​
where we don't feel welcome
​
let's share the wealth
that was borne on brown backs
unwelcomed once the work day is done
​
you can just make out
the people shouting back up the
school to prison pipe
where so many slalumed
out of sight and mind
where people try to climb to safety
in these arms
Are You Being Served?, 2025
collaged, children's books
20”X30”
$150
Taste is something your born with
to savor the world around
it's synonym: appreciation
​
even when some flavors
are not for
you
as in
I appreciate the gravity of this situation
no matter how hard I'm lead to believe
that what is being served
doesn't serve me
​
but of course we appreciate
show gratitude even
when you're so hungry for truth
you'll eat anything
Long Story Short, 2025
collaged, children's books, posters
2’X5’ (each)
$800 for triptych
As I child I remember
tearing up
with the rocket's red glare
belonging written
as a violent love
that patriots force upon others
without consent
​
being taught the difference
between
fact
and opinion
​
fact being something
can be proven
opinion something someone
thinks or feels​​​
opinions are intangable
personal
things one feels are right
for ones self
​
facts are public
to be shared like loaves of bread
things that are metrics to calibrate our senses.
​
But some facts can be falsified
can be proven wrong
​
facts can dress up in
mother's heels and wigs​
mimic her voice
try to nurse us,
deceive us
into believing they are mom's
loving and compassionate self
​
Say their pronoun is opinion
even though they doesn't believe in them
all star spangled and true
make up in lies and apply them to sickening cheekbones​
then hypocritically
say that drag is dangerous
that trans is an opinion
that makes her uncomfortable​
Yes, facts are also what can be twisted
to someone's convenience
using names in vain
​
vain defined as empty and without substance
​
their vanity
finding it inconceivable
that they could be extras​
in a story
where other protagonists
are fully-formed characters
able to tell their own tales
where the forgotten
violence of
opinion masquerading as truth
isn't center stage.
​
Thinking Chairs, 2025
chairs, clothing, curtains
20”X30”
NFS
COVID
made our lungs gurgle
it made us go mad with solitude
crave the humanity of a touch
it scraped away years of experience
from our tongues
what we taste
how we say
words that were locked up with us
at home
with nothing but the bird chirps
that replaced clock ticks
​
COVID also
made us sit
consider the veracity
of the warped track
that this train ran on
​
removed the E
from EGO
and made us GO forth
with eyes that were as clear
as the waters in Venice became
and its waves didn't block our
view of George Floyd
on a pavement pillow
lungs gurgling
pushing against the
oppression of human touch
tongue tasting
his mother's name for the last time
​
COVID
made us rub our eyes
to look past forefather floaters
that we only noticed from time to time
in our sightline
an augmented reality projecting their forms onto everything we look at.
​
COVID made us sit
made us learn to sit
and think
consider
with bird chirps ticking away
how had we not noticed them before?
how much longer
we can allow this to go on
in our names
without sitting
and pointing to ourselves
in those chairs
when we now need to stand up
and GO
do
something.
