Enrique Chagoya
Untitled (The Near Distant Jungle), 2014
Unframed.
Drawing from his experiences living on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border in the late …
Integrating elements of pre-Columbian mythology, Western religious iconography, and American pop culture, Enrique Chagoya’s politically charged paintings and prints are about the changing nature of culture and power relationships between the U.S., Central and South America, and the rest of the world. His work juxtaposes diverse visual references including canonical European painting and sculpture, indigenous Central American codex books, pornography, and currency. Over the past decade, he has largely focused on issues of illegal immigration, racial stereotypes, and xenophobia in the post-9/11 world. One particularly controversial piece of Chagoya’s was a multi-panel lithograph in the 2003 series “The Misadventures of Romantic Cannibals”, intended as a commentary on corruption in the Catholic church. It was widely misinterpreted and decried as a depiction of Jesus performing a sex act, and ultimately destroyed in 2010 by a museum visitor wielding a crowbar.
Unframed.
Drawing from his experiences living on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border in the late 70’s, and also in Europe in the late 90’s, Enrique Chagoya juxtaposes secular, popular, and religious symbols in order to address the ongoing cultural clash between the United States, Latin America and the world. Through …
Integrating elements of pre-Columbian mythology, Western religious iconography, and American pop culture, Enrique Chagoya’s politically charged paintings and prints are about the changing nature of culture and power relationships between the U.S., Central and South America, and the rest of the world. His work juxtaposes diverse visual references including canonical European painting and sculpture, indigenous Central American codex books, pornography, and currency. Over the past decade, he has largely focused on issues of illegal immigration, racial stereotypes, and xenophobia in the post-9/11 world. One particularly controversial piece of Chagoya’s was a multi-panel lithograph in the 2003 series “The Misadventures of Romantic Cannibals”, intended as a commentary on corruption in the Catholic church. It was widely misinterpreted and decried as a depiction of Jesus performing a sex act, and ultimately destroyed in 2010 by a museum visitor wielding a crowbar.
