Artist and curator Mark Hernandez stood in the empty gallery at Artes de la Rosa in Fort Worth and plotted the placement of his exhibit, ‘Sentimientos del Macho.’

“I like where this is,” Hernandez said, hanging a portrait he painted of his father with a stone-faced, stern look. “Every man wants to hear from their father that he loves them, that he’s proud. I can’t even think or understand what those words would look like or sound like from him.”

Hernandez curated the exhibit featuring works from 10 Latino artists with paintings, sculptures, and multimedia works that examine the emotional toll of ‘machismo’ stereotypes among Latino men.

“Stereotypes often are also very true, when it came to my family, especially. I grew up in a culture where the machismo was very oppressive,” Hernandez said. “So the theme really stems from my emotion towards men’s mental health.”

Hernandez said his father was in the cartel and was grooming him to follow in his footsteps.

“So the thing that my dad was always a huge proponent of was being tough, and being tough just meant you’re not going to show emotions even when you’re hurting,” Hernandez said. “And that’s what I want people to see is the culture we’ve been brought up in that says you can’t feel, you can’t talk about your feelings, you can’t have emotions, and if you do have emotions, you have to suppress them; I don’t want that.”

One of Hernandez’s pieces in the exhibit is a joyful self-portrait with artist doodle contributions from his 3 young children. There’s also a portrait of his son using cut-out verses from the Bible as his skin and butterflies, a symbol of metamorphosis, all around him.

“For me, breaking boundaries and breaking what I would call generational curses is what we need to do as men,” Hernandez said, getting emotional. “It’s showing my kid, for my son, to look at me and say, ‘I want to be a man, I want to be a man like my dad.'”

If Hernandez’s own father could see him now, “I think he’d be proud,” Hernandez said.

Sentimientos del Macho opens Saturday, Sept. 6 at 5 p.m. at Artes de la Rose, 1440 N. Main Street, Fort Worth. Manik Tequila will provide refreshments. There is an artist talk with mental health expert Rene Garcia at 7:30 p.m. The exhibit runs through September 27th.