SAN ANTONIO, TX.- The women who shaped Texas and Mexico were not simply witnesses to history. They were participants, survivors, cultural transmitters, laborers, activists, mothers, revolutionaries and community leaders whose resilience and determination helped shape the cultural landscape connecting Mexico, Texas and the American West.

Opening Oct. 15 at the Briscoe Western Art Museum, Kathy Sosa: Revolutionary Women of Texas and Mexico brings those stories to the forefront through more than 30 works by San Antonio artist Kathy Sosa. On view through June 14, 2027, the exhibition complements the Briscoe’s landmark Tejano Legacy: Another American Origin Story and offers a contemporary artistic continuation of the history explored throughout that exhibition. Works featured include paintings, mixed media and sculpture.

“Women have always been essential to the story of the West, but too often their contributions have been minimized or left out altogether,” said Liz Jackson, President and CEO of the Briscoe Western Art Museum. “Kathy’s work gives these women the presence they deserve. Through her portraits, we encounter women who endured upheaval, crossed borders, preserved traditions, raised families, built communities and created change. The exhibition makes that history personal and reminds us that these women didn’t simply live through history – they helped shape the Texas and American West we know today.”

Revolutionary Women of Texas and Mexico will mark the reopening of the Briscoe’s Women of the West Gallery, currently closed as part of the museum’s ongoing renovation. The refreshed gallery will reopen in time to welcome Sosa’s exhibition and expand the stories of the women who built and shaped the West.

Revolutionary Women: History Through a Contemporary Lens

San Antonio artist Kathy Sosa is a self-taught artist whose work explores mestizaje and the distinctive cultural identity of the Texas-Mexico borderlands. A Spanish term for the mixing and blending of peoples and cultures, mestizaje historically referred to racial and ethnic mixing, particularly among Indigenous peoples and Europeans in the Americas. Over time, the term has also come to describe a broader cultural process: the convergence of traditions, languages, ideas, identities and ways of life.

For Sosa, mestizaje is not simply a historical concept. It is the living culture of the Texas-Mexico borderlands – the blending of peoples, races, ethnicities, languages, ideas, habits and cultures that she has experienced since childhood. In San Antonio, she sees it expressed in everything from language and music to food, clothing, family traditions and everyday life.

That exploration takes on a particularly human dimension in Revolutionary Women of Texas and Mexico. The exhibition draws upon Sosa’s book, Revolutionary Women of Texas and Mexico: Portraits of Soldaderas, Saints and Subversives, while also encompassing other women and acts Sosa considers revolutionary. The exhibition focuses on women whose lives and actions challenge conventional ideas about who shaped the history of Texas, Mexico and the American West. Her subjects were not simply witnesses to history. They were participants, survivors, cultural transmitters, laborers, activists, mothers, revolutionaries and community leaders.

After a career in Hispanic advertising and communications, Sosa began painting at age 48 and has spent more than two decades telling stories of borderlands culture through painting, mixed media, public art and altar installations. Her work draws inspiration from Mexican and Mesoamerican visual traditions, incorporating portraiture, textiles, pattern and symbolism to explore women, identity and memory. Her nationally recognized exhibition Huipiles: A Celebration debuted at the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington, D.C., as part of the Smithsonian Latino Center’s “Mexico at the Smithsonian” before traveling to San Antonio’s Museo Alameda.

Sosa is the author of Mestizaje: The Feminist Art of Kathy Sosa and coeditor and illustrator of Revolutionary Women of Texas and Mexico: Portraits of Soldaderas, Saints, and Subversives. She is co-producer of the documentary series Children of the Revolución: How the Mexican Revolution Changed America’s Destiny, chronicling the history of the Texas-Mexico borderlands. Her work has been exhibited across the country and featured by national and regional media.

A Contemporary Companion to Nearly 400 Years of Tejano History

The concept of mestizaje also bridges Sosa’s work and Tejano Legacy: Another American Origin Story, the largest and most ambitious exhibition in the Briscoe’s history. On view through Jan. 18, 2027, Tejano Legacy explores nearly 400 years of Tejano history, culture and identity through more than 100 artworks and artifacts. Its scholarship examines the people, cultures, migrations, conflicts, faith, traditions and identities that shaped Texas and demonstrates how generations of cultural exchange created a distinctive borderlands culture that remains vibrant today.

Where Tejano Legacy presents that story through historical art, objects and scholarship, Revolutionary Women of Texas and Mexico offers a focused, contemporary examination of its human dimensions. Sosa’s women reveal how culture and identity endure through periods of migration, conflict and profound change, carried forward through language, food, religion, family, music, storytelling, dress and memory. The connection is particularly fitting because Sosa is among the contemporary artists represented in Tejano Legacy, demonstrating how the history explored throughout the exhibition continues to inspire artists and shape cultural identity today.