I have never been to Mexico City, but I grew up in Taipei and believe that all colonial cities share a certain family resemblance. They have the same architecture, the same bones — broad flat allées to welcome triumphant conquerors, squares and plazas modeled on European antecedents, baroque administrative buildings with formal gardens, botanical gardens and zoological parks — and the same hodgepodge of languages, borrowed and native.
Enrique Chagoya, the star of the Berkeley Art Museum’s Borderlandia, was born in Mexico City, an environment that, as the show’s curator writes, is “filled with the ‘parallel experiences’ of disconnected cultures.”
Chagoya’s subject matter — kitschy images of Superman mingling with Catholic, Aztec, and Mayan imagery — belongs to the realm of feverish nightmares, and is most powerful on an intimate scale, as quick visual pulses reminiscent of late night channel surfing. The hapless viewer might uncover a disturbing mix of tele-evangelism, action movies, infomercials, and forgotten old movies starring long-dead stars. So, too, in Chagoya’s codices, we might encounter a voluptuous maiden and a Mayan god, locked in some strange and inexplicable visual embrace.
On Borderlandia‘s opening night, the Berkeley Art Museum was filled with Berkeley’s old guard. Tweedy professors mingled alongside well-heeled museum donors, and art dealers circulated through the galleries. They took in Chagoya’s critiques of capitalist ideology and imperialism, while nibbling on paté and foie gras. Above the crowd, I could see a single Chagoya charcoal of a little girl cowering beneath a massive gloved hand.
I like Chagoya best when he works on a small scale. A fine draftsman, he can draw with a delicate and sensitive line, and his codices (book-size accordions, based on Aztec illustrated books) showcase his skill with color and line. Chagoya’s color palette is at times vivid, almost lurid, and at times so quiet as to be grisaille. These codices reward patience and sustained attention.
