About
Deanna Ledezma, Ph.D., is a Tejanx scholar, writer, and educator specializing in Latinx/e photography and contemporary art, with an research focus on diasporic identity formations, notions of family and kinship, and LGBTQ+ histories. Her scholarship engages with critical archival studies and genres of life writing, including artists’ books, zines, and photo-essays. She is currently completing her book manuscript Unsettled Archives: Kinships and Diasporas in Latinx Photography.
In addition to her work as an art historian, she is a nonfiction writer and creative practitioner who collaborates with artists on publications, exhibitions, installations, and public-facing events. Deanna Ledezma co-founded the Place as Practice Research Collective with Josh Rios (The School of the Art Institute of Chicago), and Anthony Romero (Dartmouth College).
Creek on the family property, Bandera, Texas from the series Returning as research, 2023–present. Photograph by Deanna Ledezma with the Place as Practice Research Collective.
Bio
Deanna Ledezma is the Postdoctoral Research Associate and Writing Lab Director of the Crossing Latinidades Humanities Research Initiative (2024–present). She earned her Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) and was previously the Postdoctoral Research Associate of the Inter-University Program for Latino Research/UIC Mellon Fellowship Program. Her current book project, Unsettled Archives: Kinships and Diasporas in Latinx Photography, examines how Latinx/es use photography to negotiate their cultural and diasporic identities, assert their presence amid the ongoing effects of settler colonialism, and commemorate kinship formations, including those that have been disregarded or censured for exceeding conventional notions of family.
Forthcoming exhibition catalog essays include “Diasporic Practices of Placemaking and Home in Chicanx Photography” in Chicano Camera Culture: A Photographic History, 1966 to 2026 (University of Washington Press, 2026); “Kindred Memories and Regional Resonances in the Family Albums of Carmen Lomas Garza” in Carmen Lomas Garza: Picturing the Familiar (Arizona State University Art Museum, 2026); and “Sophie Rivera: Interdependencies and Dimensions of Care” in Sophie Rivera: Double Exposures (Aperture 2026). Her essay “Archival Temporalities and Queer Kinships in the Photographs of Diana Solís” will be published in Feminist Visual Solidarities and Kinships (Rutgers University Press). Her previous publications have appeared in Art Journal, Photography & Culture, caa.reviews, Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture, Intervenxions, the book Reworking Labor, and the exhibition catalog Akito Tsuda: Pilsen Days.
Working together, Deanna Ledezma, Josh Rios, and Anthony Romero are the founding members of the Place as Practice Research Collective. Born and raised in South Central Texas, each collective member holds familial ties and ancestral connections to this region and Northern Mexico. The artists refer to themselves as Tejanx, a shared term of identification with a regional specificity that encapsulates their bicultural positionalities. As a collective, their research-based practice encompasses photography, sculpture, installation, moving image, and creative writing. Their artworks and publications articulate the complexities of Tejanx, Mexican, and Mexican American identities while addressing the ongoing effects of Spanish colonialism, settler colonialism, and migration. Their inaugural exhibition, The place where the creek goes underground, was held at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University from September 16 to December 14, 2024. Their exhibition Not So Much in Words: Kinship Citations is on view at the Black Family Visual Arts Center at Dartmouth College from January 6 to April 26, 2026. Their co-authored book manuscript, Green Pecans and Other Inheritances: A Collective Memoir, is in progress.
In addition to these projects, Deanna Ledezma is a lecturer in the Departments of Art History, Theory, and Criticism and Liberal Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has developed and taught new courses on topics aligning with her research including, Topics in Modern and Contemporary Art: Identities, Latinx/e Art and Visual Culture, Literature of Latinx Diasporas, Latinx Life Writing, and The Creative Lives of Archives.
Scholarly Publications
In Progress Scholarly Book Manuscript
Unsettled Archives: Kinships and Diasporas in Latinx Photography
Forthcoming
“Lineages of Labor: Latinx Artists at Work.” In Routledge Companion to Latinx Art, edited by Rocío Aranda-Alvarado, Ray Hernández-Durán, and E. Carmen Ramos. Routledge (manuscript submitted).
“Archival Temporalities and Queer Kinships in the Photographs of Diana Solís.” In Feminist Visual Solidarities and Kinships, edited by Erina Duganne, Susan Richmond, and Genevieve Hyacinthe. Rutgers University Press (forthcoming, 2027).
“Sophie Rivera: Interdependencies and Dimensions of Care.” In Sophie Rivera: Double Exposures, edited by Susanna Temkin. Distributed by Aperture. Published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same title, El Museo del Barrio (forthcoming, June 2026).
“Diasporic Practices of Placemaking and Home in Chicanx Photography.” In Chicano Camera Culture: A Photographic History, 1966 to 2026, edited by Elizabeth Ferrer. Distributed by the University of Washington Press. Published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same title, Riverside Art Museum and the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture (forthcoming, March 2026).
“Kindred Memories and Regional Resonances in the Family Albums of Carmen Lomas Garza.” In Carmen Lomas Garza: Picturing the Familiar, edited by Alana Hernandez. Published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same title, Arizona State University Art Museum (forthcoming, 2026).
Published
“Con(tra) El Archivo: Artists in Conversation.” Interview with William Camargo, Arlene Mejorado, Irene Antonia Diane Reece, and Alexa Ramírez Posada, conducted and edited by Deanna Ledezma, Intervenxions, The Latinx Project at New York University, December 6, 2024.
“Revisiting Pilsen: Akito Tsuda’s Photographs and the Making of a Latinx Archive.” Introductory essay to exhibition catalog for Akito Tsuda: Pilsen Days. Published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same title, curated by Oscar Arriola and presented at the Chicago Public Library, June 3–December 6, 2024.
“Review of Reclaiming the Americas: Latinx Art and the Politics of Territory by Tatiana Reinoza.” Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture 6, no. 2 (April 2024): 161–162.
Ledezma, Deanna, and Josh Rios. “Photographs from the Fields: The Digital Activism of the United Farm Workers.” In Reworking Labor, edited by Ellen Rothenberg and Daniel Eisenberg, 118–139. Chicago: The Institute for Curatorial Research & Practice at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2023.
“Review of Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s–Today.” Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. caa.reviews, May 3, 2023.
Solís, Diana. Luz: Seeing the Space Between Us. Foreword and selected bibliography by Deanna Ledezma. Chicago: Flatlands Press, 2022.
“Selecting Views of Las Trampas: Contact Sheets by Fred E. Mang Jr. and David Jones at the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives.” Photography & Culture 14, no. 1 (March 2021): 1–13.
“Regarding Family Photography in Contemporary Latinx Art.” Art Journal 79, no. 3 (Fall 2020): 80–89.
An opened copy of the chapbook Corona: Shadows of the Loved (2018) with a snapshot of Jackie Luna holding an accordion (1959). Photograph by Deanna Ledezma for “Beyond the Frame: A Conversation on Family Photography with Deanna Ledezma,” an interview by Sandra Riaño for The Latinx Project’s Intervenxions, 2022.
Nonfiction Writing
Green Pecans and Other Inheritances: A Collective Memoir, co-authored by the Place as Practice Research Collective members Deanna Ledezma, Josh Rios, and Anthony Romero (manuscript and artworks in progress)
Not So Much in Words: Kinship Citations. Exhibition catalog with an introductory essay, nonfiction vignettes, and images by Deanna Ledezma, Josh Rios, and Anthony Romero (Place as Practice Research Collective). Published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same title, Black Family Visual Arts Center, Dartmouth College (forthcoming, April 2026).
The place where the creek goes underground. Broadsheet takeaway and exhibition catalog with nonfiction essays and images by Deanna Ledezma, Josh Rios, and Anthony Romero (Place as Practice Research Collective). Published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same title, Harvard Radcliffe Institute, 2024.
The place where the creek goes underground, an artists’ publication with photographs and creative nonfiction essays by Anthony Romero with Deanna Ledezma and Josh Rios, Harvard Radcliffe Institute (November 2024)
We Eat All the Way Down to the Green. Chicago: self-published, 2019. A testimonio-based chapbook created with my father for Re: Working Labor, an exhibition curated by Ellen Rothenberg and Daniel Eisenberg at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Sullivan Galleries.
Corona: Shadows of the Loved. Memphis: Walls Divide Press, 2018.
“Arrangements.” In Imperceptibly and Slowly Opening: A Group Exhibition about Plants, edited by Caroline Picard and Devin King, 174–187. Chicago: Green Lantern Press, 2016.
Collaborations: Creative and Curatorial Projects
Not So Much in Words: Kinship Citations, exhibition by Deanna Ledezma, Josh Rios, and Anthony Romero (Place as Practice Research Collective), Black Family Visual Arts Center, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 6–April 26, 2026.
Johnson, Jameson. “On Kinship with Land and One Another: In Conversation with Deanna Ledezma, Josh Rios, and Anthony Romero.” Boston Art Review, no. 13 (Fall/Winter 2024): 68–71.
The place where the creek goes underground, exhibition by Deanna Ledezma, Josh Rios, and Anthony Romero (Place as Practice Research Collective), curated by Meg Rotzel with Caitlin Julia Rubin, Johnson-Kulukundis Family Gallery, Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Cambridge, September 16–December 14, 2024.
Contigo, Diana Solís, group exhibition co-curated by Nicole Marroquin and Deanna Ledezma, Co-Prosperity, Chicago, August 5–September 23, 2023.
Ballad of the Uprooted, installation by Deanna Ledezma, Josh Rios, and Anthony Romero for Re:Working Labor, exhibition curated by Ellen Rothenberg and Daniel Eisenberg, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago Sullivan Galleries, 2019.
Resounding the Archive at Echo Amphitheater, creative research project and installation by Deanna Ledezma and Josh Rios in Truth & Reconciliation: A Group Exhibition, curated by Toni L. Gentilli, Santa Fe Art Institute, New Mexico, September 3–October 4, 2019.
Photographs from Deanna Ledezma and Josh Rios, Resounding the Archive at Echo Amphitheater, Carson National Forest, Arriba County, New Mexico, mixed-media installation, 2019. Research on the land grant struggle supported by the Santa Fe Art Institute’s Truth and Reconciliation Thematic Residency, 2019.