Enrique Chagoya

Artist Biography

Enrique Chagoya makes paintings and prints about the changing nature of culture. “My artwork is a conceptual fusion of opposite cultural realities that I have experienced in my lifetime. I integrate diverse elements: from pre-Columbian mythology, Western religious iconography and American popular culture.”

Enrique Chagoya’s print, Illegal Alien’s Guide to Critical Theory, is a personal commentary on current immigration issues. Here the artist depicts himself recovering from a bicycle accident. In a cartoon strip across the bottom of the print, Chagoya (the plucked chicken in a sombrero) rides his bicycle past superheroes and the Border Patrol. Many of the characters have cartoon balloons with “artspeak” quotes from art books and reviews. In this context the quotes become a surreal and satirical self-criticism.

The Des Moines Art Center has mounted a twenty-five year survey of Chagoya’s work titled Enrique Chagoya: Borderlandia, on view until January 6, 2008. The exhibition will also travel to the Berkeley Art Museum and the Palm Springs Art Museum during 2008.

Enrique Chagoya is currently Assistant Professor of Art at Stanford University, where he received the Dean’s Award in the Humanities in 1998.

Selected Collections: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; New York Public Library, New York, NY; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

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