Francesca Brunetti: “Loving is Caring”
Saba Besier: Selected Works
Antonio Lechuga: Selected Works
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 10th, 5-7 PM
Exhibition: January 10 - February 14th, 2026
Dr. Francesca Brunetti
“Loving is Caring”
January 10 - February 14
“The Mushrooms of Plato’s Cave”, 2023, watercolor and digital drawing, detail.
The Liliana Bloch Gallery is proud to present “Loving is Caring” a solo exhibition from Italian artist Dr. Francesca Brunetti, to open our 2026 programming.
Dr. Brunetti’s exhibition brings together two bodies of work centered on ecofeminism and philosophy. The Mushrooms of Plato’s Cave reimagines Plato’s myth through a post-human, ecofeminist lens. In Brunetti’s narrative, the protagonist chooses not to ascend toward the sun and abstract thought, as the male prisoner does in Plato’s tale. Instead, the figure descends underground into a world inhabited by fungi, worms, and bacteria.
The second series, Soil Party: Rats, Roots, Worms, and Other Punks, is a multimedia project created through watercolor, animation, and sound. The work draws from Indigenous, feminist, and environmental philosophies that question dominant Western ideas about nature and materiality. These thinkers note that traditional Western thought often positions soil, and other marginalized entities referenced in the title, as a passive background to the actions of the white male subject. Soil Party instead embraces soil as an active, sentient, and creative presence.
Read together, these works form a critical artistic response that speaks to broader conversations about environment, embeddedness, and social justice. Through a fantastical and richly colorful visual language, the project invites viewers to reconsider soil not as inert matter but as a thriving, diverse, and generative entity.
Dr. Brunetti is both an artist and a scholar. She completed a PhD in Visual and Performing Arts at the University of Texas at Dallas, an MA in Communication Design from the Glasgow School of Art, and a BA and MA in Philosophy from La Sapienza University of Rome.
Her work has been exhibited at the Shanghai Art Museum, in Shanghai, China, Art Center Nabi in Seoul, Korea, the Chinese European Art Centre, in Xiamen, China, Linköping University, in Linköping, Sweden, University of Texas at Dallas, to name a few. Her artistic projects have been presented at international academic conferences, and her writing has appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as appeared in Art Journal, Cogent Arts & Humanities, Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Research Journal, and Visual Culture & Gender.
Saba Besier
Selected Works
January 10 - February 14
Arisotles Lantern. 2024, Porcelain ceramic. Detail.
The Liliana Bloch Gallery is proud to present a series of Selected Works by Saba Besier. Saba's work acknowledges the ecological trauma and impact of human effect on our world and the species that inhabit it. Her recent work draws attention to the ocean, as coral reefs and marine life are at risk and struggling from the effects of climate change and pollution. Saba deliberately leaves sections of her work uncolored to allow the natural pale ivory color of the porcelain to shine through, mimicking the bleaching of real-life sea organisms. Saba utilizes her expertise with slab building, throwing, hand sculpting, metallurgy, and alchemy to create her sculptures and ceramic pieces.
Saba Besier is a Dallas-based American artist born in Pakistan. She holds an MFA from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. She has received awards and recognition for her work from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the XII Florence International Biennale, and the Contemporary Art Curator magazine. Her work has been shown at the XII Florence International Biennale in Florence, Italy, the Old Jail Art Center in Albany, Texas, Sebastopol Center For the Arts in Sebastopol, California, Mercedes-Benz Gallery in Manhattan, New York, and the Archway Gallery in Houston, Texas.
Antonio Lechuga
Selected Works
January 10 - February 14
Antonio Lechuga. Our Lady’s. 2024, Various fleece blankets, thread. 26 x 24 inches.
The Liliana Bloch Gallery presents a series of Selected Works by Antonio Lechuga, a multidisciplinary artist born in Dallas, TX, where he currently lives and works. He attended the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles, CA.
Antonio’s practice focuses on the intersection of art, design, architecture, and social change. He uses a varied visual language of materials and processes to discuss and investigate his culture and existence; both his existence and experiences as a Tejano living in the 21st century, and its constant battle with the erasure of that history. Antonio’s research aims to piece together new narratives for the Mexican-American Texas region, highlighting its rich, deep, and turbulent past.
Lechuga has exhibited at the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Blaffer Art Museum in Houston, TX, the Texas Biennial, and Various Small Fires in Dallas, TX; and had solo exhibitions at Love Texas Art Gallery in Fort Worth, TX, and at the Oak Cliff Cultural Center. Antonio’s work is part of the permanent collections of the Dallas Museum of Art. His work is currently on display as part of a group exhibition, “Los Encuentros,” at the Ballroom Marfa in Marfa, TX.