Maruca Salazar likes to think of “Contacto 12,” the latest exhibit at the Museo de las Americas, as a sort of artistic fusion.
“You see it in the Korean- Mexican fusion cuisine, and that is exactly what is happening in art,” said Salazar, the Latino museum’s executive director for the past two years. “Native cultures have gone through an evolution, and we have a new hybrid race that is developing its own influences.”
“Contacto 12,” which opens Thursday, will feature nearly 60 works — including paintings, murals, sculptures and large-scale installations — that play with themes of adaptation and reappropriation.
Specifically: how the descendants of America’s native cultures have interpreted images of conquest and colonialism to reflect their identities.
It’s heady and often provocative stuff, especially when artists juxtapose traditional Latin American and Mexican imagery with contemporary, pop-culture-based iconography.
Political overtones
Take Einar and Jamex de la Torre’s striking “Colonial Atmosphere,” a mixed-media installation that employs a giant Olmec (a pre-Columbian civilization) head as a lunar landing capsule. It also presents a life- sized Neil Armstrong space- suit that resembles Coatlicue — the Aztec “Mother of Gods” and Museo’s mascot.
The political commentary isn’t always so blunt, but it’s always there. Colorado artist Tony Ortega’s cartoonish conte crayon and charcoal murals “Beware of Dog,” “Onward Christian Soldier” and “Death Becomes You” confront the viewer upon entering the museum. Contrasting images of marching American soldiers, kids on skateboards and protective angels are backed by a soundtrack of barking dogs, crying babies and music, adding to the sense of magical realism.
Familiar reference points abound, from overt Grateful Dead imagery in Jerry Vigil’s “Jerry’s Jerry” (the logical evolution of that jam band’s skull- and-roses motif) to the de la Torres’ elaborate, Day of the Dead-inspired “Baja Kali,” a blown-glass, pyramid-shaped piece filled with skulls and electric lights.
Salazar hopes the exhibit’s colorful, occasionally jarring pieces will start dialogue among Latinos and the larger community about past exploitation and shared identity. Or to “allow us to see new interpretations, not as the polluted end of traditions, but as something new and oddly modern.”
“I think Museo needs to improve the service to the community by addressing these (dialogues),” she said. “When it comes down to it, identity is a topic that really is part of the Latino aesthetic, and you have to revisit it once in a while.”
Ominous and vibrant
That shouldn’t be a problem with bold, eye-catching pieces such as Quintin Gonzalez’s luchador series. The Denver artist, whose works have exhibited nationally, uses a hyper-realistic graphical style to depict various Mexican wrestlers against epic, sometimes apocalyptic backgrounds.
“When I started working with this body of images, which deal with heroic imagery, I looked at a lot of different sources, ranging from Hong Kong action cinema to (Eugène) Delacroix’s ‘Liberty Leading the People,’ ” said Gonzalez, an associate professor of painting and drawing at the University of Colorado Denver.
“I wanted to tie this broad scope back to Latino or Chicano culture and join elements of visual culture from Latin America and from Hispanics in the U.S.,” he said.
Exemplary is Gonzalez’s “Mi Padre, Mi Enemigo” (“My Father, My Enemy”), which depicts a Mexican wrestler with a dual identity: one side light- skinned and blue-eyed with tattoos such as “1492” and “Fascismo,” the other brown- skinned and brown-eyed with Mayan-derived imagery adorning his torso.
While it may sound contradictory to call some of the pieces simultaneously ominous and vibrant, traditional and subversive, it’s just part of the exhibit’s emphasis on fluid, ever-changing identity.
“We just want to provide opportunities for people to talk with one another,” said Salazar, the former arts coordinator and arts staff developer for Denver Public Schools — and a longtime Denver arts activist.
“How much do we really know about Latino and Chicano art in Western civilization? How much do we share?”
John Wenzel: 303-954-1642 or jwenzel@denverpost.com
“Contacto 12.”
Mixed-media art exhibit. Museo de las Americas, 861 Santa Fe Drive. Featuring the art of Quintin Gonzalez, David Ocelotl, Tony Ortega, Omar Rodriguez, Einar and Jamex de la Torre, and Jerry Vigil. June 23- Sept. 19. Tuesday-Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Saturday-Sunday, noon-5 p.m. $3-$5. 303-571-4401 or
