Alondra M Garza - PRETTY HOT Solo Show

Second Shift Studio, Saint Paul, MN. 1128 Payne Ave. St. Paul, MN 55130.

On View October 4 - November 1, 2025. PRESS

GALLERY HOURS:

Saturday and Sunday, 12-3 pm, or by appointment.

To schedule an appointment, email: alondra.mari95@gmail.com

Exhibition Gallery View

PRETTY HOT solo exhibition explores the complexities of Latina identity through symbolically charged mixed media paintings, performance photography, and installation.

Through humor, sensuality, Latin culture, and femme bodies, Garza transforms stereotypes and narratives into sensory-driven acts of empowerment and vulnerability.

Pretty Hot includes expressive oil and Cheeto dust paintings, watercolors created while caregiving, photographs reclaiming the “Hot Cheeto Girl”, and fiery installations. They are spicy, made to stain, and more than a snack.

Exhibition Gallery View

Her oil paintings are created in a flow state, referencing and altering a mix of found images, posed images by her or her family, all from pop cultural references, driven by instinct and dark humor. The result is a raw, expressionistic surface that captures not just an image, but a moment of ambiguity.

It's a Chicas Thing, Oil on Canvas, 30” x 30”, 2025

CRUZ, Oil on Canvas, 28” x 22”, 2025

BOOB SHOT, Oil on Canvas, 18” x 24”, 2025

Dallas Cowgirl Cheerleaders, Oil on Canvas, 30” x 40”, 2025

Watercolor works offer a more mobile and spontaneous medium, born during a time spent caregiving for her mother, who was fighting for her life and won the battle—being on and off in a hospital, this was a period that demanded speed, accessibility, and tenderness.

THIRSTY, Watercolor on Paper, 11” x 14”, 2025

Snow Angel, Watercolor on Paper, 11” x 14”, 2025

Garza adopts the exaggerated persona of the "Hot Cheeto Girl"—a stereotype often used to mock working-class Latinas’ femininity. Rather than rejecting this label, she reclaims and transforms it, using Hot Cheetos as literal art tools. The snack becomes a medium of empowerment, satire, and resistance.

Para Chuparse Los Dedos, Oil and Hot Cheeto Dust on Canvas, 16” x 22”, 2025

By dipping Cheetos in water to make pigment or blending their dust with her fingers, Garza crafts vibrant, ironic, and hyperfemme artworks that challenge the viewer to reconsider assumptions about taste, consumption, and representation. These works speak to the eroticization, commodification, and objectification of Latine bodies, but also to their strength, humor, and power. These are not just playful images; they are acts of cultural commentary, tributes to fierceness, and critiques of racialized beauty norms.

B00bs, Hot Cheetos Dust on Canvas, 14" x 11", 2023

CHIQUITA PERO PICOSA, Hot Cheeto Dust and Hot Cheeto Makeup on Canvas, 8" x 11", 2024

Garza’s use of Hot Cheetos also addresses issues of accessibility and health. Red 40, a pigment found in the snack, is linked to health risks that disproportionately affect communities with limited access to food and educational opportunities. Her choice to use the product excessively as pigment, rather than food, becomes a reclaiming of agency.

Edible Underwear, Hot Cheeto Dust (Cheetle), Hot Cheeto Makeup Palette, Hairspray and Acrylic Sealer on Canvas, 12” x 16”, 2024

Through performance photography and digital collage, Garza channels multiple personas, engaging in a kind of visual code-switching that reflects her lived experiences as a bilingual, bicultural woman navigating hybrid spaces.

HOT, Series of film, digital collages, and performance photography, 2024

Tied to the struggles of Latines identities, this piece is made as a protest against the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids in the U.S.

Alondra uses ice cubes and Hot Cheetos; she burns the Hot Cheetos, which are shaped like peoples faces, to melt the ice around them. Symbolizing that ICE melts, as that has become one of the symbols and quotes for the protests against ICE.

OUR FIRE MELTS ICE, Hot Cheetos and Ice Cube Installation, 2025

This exhibition is about more than reclaiming a stereotype—it’s about redefining it. Garza honors the lives, bodies, and stories of Latinas with vibrant honesty and emotional grit. She invites us to see femme identity as layered, dramatic, joyful, and undeniably powerful.