April Open House: The Neon Republic Reception

The Neon Republic - a bold two-artist exhibit in one of Austin's most unique galleries. Poignant art, craft cocktails, and good vibes!

Join us for a night of art, conversation, and connection as two distinct artistic practices collide to question the stories we’re told—and the ones we inherit. Expect complimentary craft cocktails, a vibrant crowd, and an atmosphere designed to spark curiosity, reflection, and dialogue.

At a moment when American culture is fracturing along fault lines of power, identity, and historical memory, The Cathedral announces the opening of The Neon Republic — a bold, immersive exhibition featuring the work of resident artist Autumn Mae and guest artist Chris Tobar. On view during their Open House on April 27th, the exhibition confronts the political and cultural upheaval of our present moment through painting, sculpture, mirrors, repurposed iconography, and the live transmissions of a fictional pirate radio station, K-RDEO 88.8 FM.

The Neon Republic is not background art. It is a conversation this country is overdue for.

The Neon Republic ultimately poses urgent questions:Who writes the story of a nation? Who is remembered? And what new worlds become possible when artists reclaim the narrative?

Voted as one of the top three places to see art in Austin, this woman and immigrant-owned gallery is proud to present this bold and intentional exhibit.

Event details:

~Tickets include access to an open bar featuring craft cocktails, local beer + spirits

~Opportunity to view and shop the exhibit

~Meet the featured artists

~View and shop hundreds of original artworks by Austin's largest women and nonbinary artist collective, atxGALS

~Only opportunity to shop prints beginning at $15 from 35+ of the top, emerging artists in Austin

About the exhibit:

We are living inside the story.

The Neon Republic arrives at a moment when the architecture of democracy feels less like a foundation and more like a fault line — when truth is legislated, history is litigated, and the symbols we were handed as children have been stripped, repainted, and handed back to us as weapons.

This exhibition does not look away.

Across painting, sculpture, mirrors, and immersive narrative environments, two distinct but urgently interconnected artistic practices converge — interrogating power, dismantling mythology, and refusing the silences that systems depend on to survive.

One body of work cuts directly into the nervous system of American political life. Through plastic, resin, repurposed iconography, and the cold honesty of reflective surfaces, these works map the machinery behind normalized inequality — the propaganda dressed as patriotism, the policies dressed as progress, the freedom dressed as commodity. Familiar language and beloved symbols are recontextualized not to shock, but to make visible what was always there: power operating quietly, beneath the noise, through complicity and consumption. In an era of executive overreach, institutional erosion, and manufactured chaos, these works ask us to stop and look — really look — at what we have accepted as ordinary.

In direct dialogue, The Neon Rodeo by Chris Tobar reimagines Western iconography through an Afro-Latino lens, where the cowboy steps out of the myth of conquest and into something far more honest — a figure in motion, searching. Navigating identity, endurance, and the radical act of belonging in a country that has never stopped deciding who deserves to. Through immersive storytelling and the transmissions of pirate radio station K-RDEO 88.8 FM, Tobar's work unfolds as a living, breathing universe where autobiography, folklore, and speculative world-building collide — a signal broadcasting from the margins, insisting on being heard.

Together, these practices build a charged visual republic — a space where the official version of history meets everything it tried to bury. Mirrors pull the viewer into the work itself, because complicity is never just theirs. The exhibition becomes both reflection and reckoning: a place where political structures fracture under scrutiny, cultural myths are reclaimed by the people they were built to exclude, and new worlds are assembled from what the old ones left behind.

At a time when communities are being legislated out of existence, when art programs are defunded and histories are banned from classrooms, when the loudest voices insist on a single, flattened story of who we are — The Neon Republic is an act of resistance, an act of imagination, and an act of love.

Want to meet the artists? Join us for a limited-access Artist Talk prior to doors for an intimate look at the exhibit through the artists' eyes.

Featured artists:

Resident Artist, Autumn Mae

First, an artist and secondly an anthropologist, the art of Autumn Mae is a prolific collection of visual ethnographies, strewn together by their common goal to ignite conversation around otherwise ignored or politically, economically, socially sensitive topics. Each new series invokes new ideas, techniques, materials, modes and communities. Albeit a mix media artist at heart, it is in the end the ideas that decide the medium. Each artwork builds its idea upon the last creation. The art itself becomes the field study metaphorically, expressing in visual form ideas by coupling Aestheticism and reflexive objectivity. The act of creating, the process, material and technique become the road to the hypothesis, otherwise unknown until the titles reveal themselves through the research. Each work in the series becomes an event of research and peer review. Thus the art of Autumn Mae is a psychogeographic review wherein each series is a new field study. Every study becomes a surprise; yielding histories of cultural progression, oppression, and reflection inciting and igniting a conversation about our future, our past, or our present human condition in respect to our geographical existence.

Guest Artist, Chris “Tobar” Rodriguez

As an Afro-Latino artist born in Chicago, detoured through Orlando, and now grounded in Texas, I create from the in-between. Between North and South. Between tradition and imagination. Between visibility and erasure.

The Neon Rodeo is not about how Western I can become. It is about the ride of a creator trying to find his place in the art world.

Through bold color, layered symbolism, mirrors, projection, and character-driven storytelling, I build immersive spaces that reflect the questions I carry: Who gets remembered? Who gets mythologized? Who gets to define the narrative?

The cowboy, in my universe, becomes a metaphor. Not a symbol of conquest, but of searching. Of endurance. Of identity under pressure. Through an Afro-Latino lens, I reimagine Western iconography as a space for Black, Brown, and non-binary presence — not as outsiders, but as architects of their own myth.

Ultimately, my practice is about building worlds when the existing ones feel too small. The Neon Rodeo is not an escape. It’s a reclamation.

About The Cathedral:

The Cathedral is a Latina-owned art gallery, event space, and boutique workspace located in a beautifully restored 1930s church in East Austin. As the home of atxGALS, the city's largest collective of women and nonbinary artists, The Cathedral features a dynamic range of artwork throughout the year, alongside hosting unique, art-centered events.

Thank you for supporting local women + nonbinary artists and a local Latina-owned business!

Tickets are priced intentionally to cover the costs associated with the production of our shows, marketing efforts and to support our mission to provide an elevated space for emerging artists to shine. At The Cathedral, we have a unique gallery commission structure to ensure more money is going directly to the artists. Supporting our events enables this mission.

Thank you to our partners:

365 Things Austin

Austin Beerworks

BLOOM

Dulce Vida Tequila

Empress Gin

Topo Chico