We used to go for picnics to the pyramids of Teotihuacán . . . [where] my dad’s family is from. And then we were going to [Catholic] church. At the same time, I grew up with Mickey Mouse and Superman and all the comics.
Enrique Chagoya, in Patricia Hickson, “Borderlandia Unbound: An Abbreviated Guide to the Visual Anthropology of Enrique Chagoya,” in Hickson, ed., Borderlandia (Des Moines, IA: Des Moines Art Center, 2007), 13.
Frequently used in Enrique Chagoya’s bold paintings and drawings, red and black are symbolic colors grounded in pre-Columbian mythology and contemporary political philosophy. The colors represent knowledge of ancient stories; are the primary palette of Russian Constructivism, the theories and aesthetic of which inspired Chagoya’s early practice; and are adopted by many political groups—“anarchists in Europe, strikers in Mexico, and Sandinistas in Nicaragua.”1 So too, they are examples from the trove of cultural and political symbolism the artist mines in works like Their Freedom of Expression . . . The Recovery of Their Economy (1984). Chagoya produced this satirical oversized cartoon in response to the Reagan administration’s political intervention in Central America during the 1980s. Two figures of Mickey Mouse—seemingly benign but depicted with the faces of Reagan and Henry Kissinger—paint political messages with a bucket of red blood. Often creating jarring combinations of the imagery of American pop culture, which the artist was fond of as a child in Mexico City, Chagoya confronts American foreign policy with keen humor.
Enrique Chagoya, “Interview by Moira Roth,” in Enrique Chagoya: When Paradise Arrived (New York: Alternative Museum, 1989), 6. ↩︎
Known for printmaking and painting, Enrique Chagoya works in the tradition of satirical political cartoons. Bringing together pop culture icons and religious symbols, his works function as political commentary, addressing issues of US colonialism. Powerful Hand (Mano Poderosa) (1992) calls upon the Catholic icon of the mano poderosa—a hand depicted with the figures of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and three saints at its fingertips—to evoke the oppressive power of the United States in the Gulf War. The root of Chagoya’s powerful hand bears Batman’s emblem, a distinct identification with American pop culture, bringing to mind the imposition of such corporate and cultural icons on nonindustrialized countries.1 The hand gushes oil into a sea of blood also being fed by a smaller hand in the lower left corner. (Chagoya frequently uses the configuration of large with small figures in his works.) American militarism, art, capitalism, consumerism, and media represented at the fingertips suggest the country’s complicity in bloodshed for oil.
Enrique Chagoya, “Interview by Moira Roth,” in Enrique Chagoya: When Paradise Arrived (New York: Alternative Museum, 1989), 9. ↩︎
In the early 1990s, Enrique Chagoya began creating modern-day codices—accordion-like compositions like those of pre-Columbian books, most of which were destroyed during the Spanish conquest—that challenge historical narratives. They “present ‘what if’ scenarios where non-Western modes of communication reign.”1 The Labyrinth of Liberty (2004) is a ten-panel work on paper that combines a Humpty Dumpty caricature of the Lone Ranger with Christian iconography, dinosaurs, airplanes, Mayan gods and Aztec pyramids, and Arabic and Chinese scripts referencing the road to Mecca. The codex unfolds in what the artist referred to as “utopian cannibalism.”2 Rather than dominant cultures feeding off the traditions, objects, and ideas of the conquered or colonized, in Chagoya’s imagined utopian version the cannibalized culture reverses that history.
E. Carmen Ramos, “Commentaries on the Artworks,” in Ramos, ed., Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art (Washington, DC: Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2014), 135. ↩︎
Enrique Chagoya, in Mel Watkin, Utopian Cannibal: Adventures in Reverse Anthropology (St. Louis: Forum on Contemporary Art, 2001). ↩︎
Enrique Chagoya began making political cartoons in the 1970s for union and student newspapers while studying economics at Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México in Mexico City. When he moved to California in 1979, Chagoya shifted from economics to pursue a career in art. He first worked as an illustrator and graphic designer, then in 1984 he earned a BFA in printmaking from the San Francisco Art Institute. Rather than pushing a particular ideology in his art, Chagoya views the politics of his work as a reflection of his personal fears and anxieties about the world: “I try to exorcise my demons and my fears in my work.”1 His use of satire and cartoons lightens even his most scathing critiques of power.
Enrique Chagoya, in Wendy Edelstein, “Rewriting History and Poking Fun at the Powers that Be,” Berkeleyan, February 6, 2008, available at [berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2008/02/06_]chagoya.shtml.](https://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2008/02/06_chagoya.shtml.). ↩︎
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