Thursday, September 30, 2010

Mextasy, aka Tex[t]-Mex, the Gallery Show!




"Mextasy: Seductive Hallucinations of Latina/o Mannequins Prowling the American Unconscious" is an art show opening Fall 2010 at the Art Gallery @ South Texas College's Pecan Campus in McAllen, Texas--the show will be up from September 30th through November 12, 2010. There will be a lecture and book signing (free cartoon inscriptions, no less!) by William Nericcio @ 2:30pm, September 29, 2010 at the Mid-Valley Campus, Weslaco; and at 1pm, Thursday September 30, 2010 at the Pecan Campus Art Gallery in McAllen. There will also be a reception from 6 to 8pm on Thursday night at the Pecan Art Gallery.

These events are FREE/GRATIS. Click the image above for an image-laced summary.

If you love outrageous Mexican, Mexican-American and Chicana/o art, this is the show for you! Imagine El Chavo del Ocho fused with Andy Warhol and you get a feel for the groove of the show.

Curated by Rachael Freyman Brown, with the assistance of Amanda Alejos, with the meddling of the artist, Guillermo Nericcio García, the show promises to reflect and expand upon William Nericcio's 2007 book with UT Press, Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the Mexican in America.


In addition to racist artifacts from American mass culture (the bread and butter of Uncle Sam's unconscious), the show also features works that are "xicanosmotic," that is, works by Mexican-American artists where the delicious tattoo of the Mexican/US frontera is writ large as with Perry Vasquez, Izel Vargas, Marisela Norte, and Kenny Sanchez. More to come!

original posting site

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Bizarre Caucasians in the History of Illustration: Episode 17


Tex[t]-Mex uses a fair amount of bookspace exploring the construction of "Mexicans" in American mass culture; but as I have argued before (hit the word "caucasian" in the labels just below this post), our Latino/a friends (brothers, and sisters) to the South are not the only ethnicity or "race" constructed and reconstructed (text-ified, in a way) here in the lands of Uncle Sam. The "woman" in the brassiere ad above is decidedly odd, and utterly scary!

http://www.latinalista.net/palabrafinal/2010/09/texas_newspapers_immigration_poll_brings.html

http://www.latinalista.net/palabrafinal/2010/09/texas_newspapers_immigration_poll_brings.html

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