New Media Contemporary & 500X present
25:10 — A 500X TAKEOVER of NMC
Starting on September 26, and going through the month of October, 500X and its members will be taking over NMC. Please join us for a reception on 9.26.25 from 7pm till 11pm to welcome 500X back to Expo Park.
500X Gallery is one of Texas’ oldest, artist run, cooperative galleries. Established in 1978, 500X provides one of the best exhibition spaces to up and coming artists in the city of Dallas. 500X has served as an entry point into the art world and have subsequently become prominent artists in the Metroplex.
Ashley Whitt
Ashley Whitt is a multidisciplinary artist based in Dallas, Texas, whose work delves into themes of body horror, psychological states, and feminism in the digital age. Whitt draws inspiration from horror films, the Monstrous-Feminine theory proposed by Dr. Barbara Creed, and art historical movements including Surrealism and Dadaism. She employs various media and techniques—including digital manipulation, solvent transfers, sculptural bookmaking, and traditional darkroom processes as well as video and sculpture—to create visceral, dreamlike imagery that challenges perceptions of reality.
Ashley graduated from Texas Woman's University where she earned her MFA in Photography in 2012. She graduated from UT Arlington with a BFA in Photography in 2009. Formerly a professor of photography and art, Ashley served as a full-time Lecturer at Texas Christian University during 2017-2018. Ashley currently serves as the Director of Visual Resources at Southern Methodist University. She is also the president of 500X Gallery, the oldest artist run gallery in the state of Texas. She also co-founded ART Y’ALL, which offers curated art experiences that bring the DFW community closer to the creative pulse of North Texas.
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MEAT CLOWN rips out of the gap between what we live and what we’re forced to swallow. In post-Roe Texas, our bodies are treated like evidence—watched, dissected, criminalized—while our feelings are policed into silence. We’re told to smile through it, to be cute while bleeding, to laugh when commanded and choke down our rage. MEAT CLOWN spits in their face. It feeds on disgust, on fury, on laughter so sharp it cuts.
The clown shifts from joke to threat to horror. The grin stretches too wide, the paint smears into skin, and the performance collapses into raw flesh. It doesn’t heal, it doesn’t resolve—it rips the wound wider. MEAT CLOWN is grotesque, excessive, impossible to contain.
MEAT CLOWN is the body refusing control.
Image List:
A Pie in the Face, 5 minute video on 55 inch TV screen looped, 2025, NFS
Of Flowers and Flesh, 5 minute video on 8 inch CRT tv screen looped, 2025, NFS
MEAT CLOWN, fake cake made with spackle, acrylic paint, styrofoam, 2025, $600
Jamila Mendez
a multidisciplinary artist combining painting, photography, and fabric. Her collage-based acrylic and digital work is influenced by early training and studies at Texas Woman’s University in Fashion Design and Art.
Praise Dancer -
Moments of exhalation crystalized in patterns and floral.
A self Portrait ( Jamila) -
The process of making a self portrait is always full of layers. You have to disassemble what you see and reassemble it as well, and then you must evaluate if you saw yourself correctly.
Emmar Grant
a Texas-based filmmaker whose childhood road trips shaped his view of film as a space for memory. A UT Arlington graduate, he works in film, video, and gallery-based new media.
Barn Shaped House, 2025 (1st vertical)
An animated character, Mercy, laments the destruction of their childhood home. Based on the author’s experiences.
Synthetic video, vertical presentation.
Mantra, 2025 (projected on the arch)
A triptych, projection based, synthetic video installation. Three characters, wander a world full of media and distraction. The Driver, the Empress, and the Cat.
Synthetic Video.
Vipassana, 2022 (2nd vertical)
A meditation on the nature of meditation. Filmed in the house mentioned in Barn Shaped Home. The narrative takes us on a path of distraction, and then reversion to meditative breathing.
Video, vertical format.
Monica Barrera
an artist and educator with 15+ years in the DFW arts community. She teaches elementary art and creates work across drawing, painting, embroidery, weaving, and sculpture, examining the human condition through an existential lens.
Jesse’s Girlfriend, 2025
Hand-drawn animation transferred to VHS, silent, looped
Little Worlds, 2025
Time-lapse of digital drawings, color, silent, looped
Kiara Daniels
Kiara Daniels was born in Fort Worth, Texas in 2001. She received a BFA with double majors in Studio Art: Drawing and Painting and Art Education in 2024 from the University of North Texas. She also received a teacher's certification in Art from the Texas Educator Association. She is currently a member of 500x Gallery. Daniels has exhibited locally in the DFW area since 2020 and has collaborated with the Bombshell Dance Project in Dallas and the Garage Arts Project in Frisco. She lives and works in Fort Worth with her cat.
Artist Statement:
Photography and writing has emerged as a parallel process with my artistic research. Language and its rhythms help me decide which beats to emphasize to employ narrative acting as a parallel form and a form of drafting images. Color has acted as a bridge. Color has been instrumental in this process, as I navigate the way perception shapes memory. Digital photography helps me push the high saturation and saccharine hue which obscure the reality of the situation; color serves as an access to the shifting landscape beneath. My work continues to navigate grief and perception, taking from personal and research I investigate how memory and trauma affect the movement of time.
Projected piece with curtain illustration: – with me in my mind, digital collage and installation. 2023.
Projected piece: Matched Set, digital collage. 2025.