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The Texas branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has picked its artists-in-residence for 2026: the acclaimed, Austin-based writer and artist KB Brookins and the San Antonio-born painter Vincent Valdez. Selected through an open call of nearly 200 applicants, the winners will receive $30,000 and the opportunity to work with the ACLU with an eye towards criminal law reform, immigrants’ rights and equality for LGBTIA+ individuals.
Valdez’s project centres portraits of local community leaders for his New Americans series, highlighting everyday citizens who “fight the good fight, like a stubborn pulse in a dying heart”. Alongside his paintings, he plans to create “Know Your Rights” poster packets for state-wide distribution, combining archival research and activism with visual communication.
Based between Houston and Los Angeles, Valdez rose to renown through his high-impact representational paintings that tackle injustice head-on. He is a recipient of the Ford and Mellon Foundations Latinx Artist Fellowship (in 2022) and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant for Painters and Sculptors (2016). His first large museum survey Just A Dream…, which debuted at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, is now view at Mass Moca in North Adams, Massachusetts (until 5 Aptil 2026).
Brookins’s work during the residency will take on the pretrial carceral system in Texas jails through a programme of community organising and workshops alongside their original compositions, highlighting the plight of those jailed prior to a court hearing because of prohibitive bail costs. A Fort Worth native, Brookins founded Austin’s poet laureate programme and won the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award in Creative Nonfiction and the Dorothy Allison/Felice Picano Emerging Writer Award with their 2024 memoir Pretty.
“KB Brookins and Vincent Valdez challenge us to experience the world in a different way,” said Oni Blair, executive director of the ACLU of Texas. “Their work reminds us of our shared humanity and the urgent need to protect the rights of all Texans, no exceptions. I’m thrilled they’ll be collaborating with us to highlight the diverse and sometimes contrasting realities that coexist within our state. At the ACLU of Texas, we believe the arts can reach beyond age, language and culture to speak truth to power—and imagine a new way forward”.
Valdez and Brookins take up the ACLU mantle from former artists-in-residence Kill Joy, who worked with the Kitchen Yable Puppets & Press to launch a theatrical constitutional rights education tour, and Mathieu JN Baptiste, a muralist whose work empowers historically disenfranchised demographics of voters.
The ACLU of Texas has recently been leading the fight against censorship on behalf of photographer Sally Mann, whose work was removed from an exhibition at Fort Worth’s Modern Art Museum. The Fort Worth Police recently returned the photographs it had seized from that show after spending nearly $7,000 in public funds to visit New York and see Mann’s work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it has not been on display for years.
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