I’ll be in Sacramento this Friday for the opening reception of Miráme: 21st century portraits for Latino/a America curated by my homegirl Ella Diaz. It’s a show of self-portraits and artist facebook profile pictures, I’ll be exhibiting four large-scale purikura prints as part of it.
The Promo text is below:
In the early 20th century, Frida Kahlo revolutionized portraiture by painting intensely personal and unusually small self-portraits. Nearly 60 years after her death, Kahlo’s images continue to capture the attention of viewers.. Some see Kahlo’s works as a modernist shift in the western aesthetic; others are drawn to Kahlo’s unnerving ease with expressions of physical and emotional suffering. Still, others find her work provocative because the portraits ask viewers, “So what are you looking at?”
In the 21st century, self-portraits are everywhere, and they are as meaningful or as meaningless as the time it takes to create them. With the proliferation of social media and online networks, the profile pic presents a new platform for the artist concerned with the representation of his, her, or someone else’s likeness. Meticulously staging oneself in a bathroom mirror; striking a pose with drunk friends at a bar; earnestly attempting irony through shadows, silhouettes, or a favorite pet; each of these is an accidental allegory for a larger social malaise and alienation in the virtual photo albums that we carefully create in our online shrines to self.
Hope to see you all there. I’m super excited to be making inroads into the most gate-kept Chicano art city on Earth. Sacramento here I come!
Rio
Graphic Art, Tortillas, Comics, and Troublemaking 