MEXTASY: REVIEW | A Review of the STC McAllen Mextasy Show by Victoria Reyna

Bordering Mexico and the United 
States: Mextasy at South Texas College

by Victoria Reyna

The art gallery reception that I attended was truly one of the best experiences of my life. It was different than what I expected, but in a positive way. I thought that I would feel out of place, but everyone there was there for the same reason I was--a love for art. There was warmth to the place with paintings and sculptures surrounding the room. At the entrance, there were two tables set up with different Mexican foods such as nopales, beans, salsa, pico de gallo, and sweet bread, or pan dulce. Other selections were offered such as pasta and lemonade.

When I first saw the piece of art that I wanted to learn more about, I was extremely curious about it. Why had the artist made something like this? What inspired him? It obviously caught my attention when I saw the legs of a man peeking out from under a sign that read “CAUTION”. However, I became even more interested in it when I turned to look at it from another angle and saw that the man under the sign was Mexican. I knew that the artist was trying to send a message with his art but I wasn’t sure exactly what it was. All I knew was that it had something to do with his feelings about race and that it was a sculpture.

I was nervous about asking William Nericcio, the artist, about his work. I was afraid that he might think I should’ve initially understood what the message of his work was. On the contrary though, he seemed rather pleased that I had asked about that particular piece.

“Oh, that’s my favorite! I love signs!” he started. Mr. Nericcio went on to tell me that he’s always thought signs were “so cool” and had seen the caution sign thrown in the trash somewhere the same week that Jan Brewer won her fight to pass the Arizona immigration law. He expressed how wrong he thought she was, seeing as how America started with immigrants in the first place. He called her “anti-American.”

William Nericcio exhausted or, for once bashful,
poses with the review author, Victoria Reyna.

“She’s corruption,” he explained. “I think that this piece looks like something she’d have by her swimming pool! Nosotros, we’re going to have to do something.” Clearly, the artist felt anger and hate while he was constructing this piece. It was his way of taking a stand against the law he believed to be unfair and evil. He made this even more apparent when he announced that his work was a way of telling Jan Brewer to “go to hell.” Now that I know what the piece was really all about, I have a different appreciation for it. It’s not just some random things thrown together. It’s art at its best…with a real purpose and with real feelings and meaning behind it.
I had never attended such an event before, but I definitely enjoyed it. It is something I would like to do again in the future. To be surrounded by people who love and appreciate art like you do is one of the best feelings in the world.

Mextasy! An Interview-->MEXTASY OPENS AT THE LAREDO CENTER FOR THE ARTS DECEMBER 29, 2010 * Fiesta/Gala @ 6pm * Gratis!

original posting 11/4/10 | revised 12/11/2010

MEXTASY opens at the LAREDO CENTER FOR THE ARTS, DECEMBER  29, 2010 @ 6PM

An excerpt from an unpublished interview with Lorena Nava Ruggero

LNR: What is Mextasy? Why did you create it?

WN: Mextasy is an art exhibition featuring outrageous stereotypes of Mexicans and other Latinas/os; additionally, it contains sculptures, drawings, photography, and other media that attack the notion of Mexicans as less-than-human in American mass culture. The show I opened along the Rio Grande river in McAllen (September, 2010) and in Laredo this December, Mextasy, is dedicated to the old motherland and my peculiar fatherland.

Mextasy is more than a representation of ecstasy about or for Mexico; it is about the sensuous tracings Mexican culture leaves both sides of the border. More existential state than archive, Mextasy speaks to the living organism of Mexicanicity as it moves between the bodies of Mexico and the United States--an overt and covert delicious miasma that arouses as it excites, excites as it provokes. ¡Que viva Mexico!, within and without its borders.

LNR: How does Mextasy parallel your book?

WN: Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the "Mexican" in America features over 200 illustrations, with 16 pages in full color; many of these illustrations are stock representations of Mexicans (the sleeping Mexican, the bandit Mexican, the hot, Latina femme fatale). However, the book also includes original art, digital, photographic and hand-drawn, created by me. You know English Professors are known more for tweed and pomposity than their Picasso-like skills--for that reason I publish all my art under the name of Guillermo Nericcio García, what my name would have been if I had been born 10 blocks south of where I came into the world in Laredo, Texas--a bordertown with Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas.

LNR: You're primarily a writer, but this is an art exhibit -- what was it like to create this kind of "content"?

WN: I have been drawing since I was three--I made my own comic book with my sister before I was ten; after that, I was the political cartoonist for my high school newspaper (most infamous drawing? of Vice-Principal Shoup as a zeigheiling facsist for his punitive pedagogy--I was almost expelled and the nuns at St. Augustine tried to censor the paper).

LNR: What will you focus on in your lectures in Texas (I noticed two speaking engagements at libraries)?

WN: I will be focusing on my ongoing forensic work on American visual culture--so I will be dealing with the image of Mexico in the United States but also with our changing optics-obsessed culture in general--from Avatar in 3-D to the IPad, we are living through a watershed moment in textual reproduction where the turn to the visual (the semiotic) is accelerating at a mind-blowing pace. Next year, my new book appears with the University of Texas Press; it is entitled Eyegiene: Permutations of Subjectivity in the Televisual Age of Sex and Race--parts of my talks will be drawn from that work.

LNR: Is there anything else you'd like to add?

WN: I love visiting South Texas--it is like a return to my roots; and though Northern Mexico and South Texas are in cultural chaos right now, the fallout of the Narco Wars hitting this locale hard, I think its important to remind yourself of where you come from. You would think that Southern California and South Texas are the same, but they are like worlds apart.

Mextasy Invitation Graphic

Direct LINK | Laredo Center for the Arts

MEXTASY: Seductive Hallucinations of Latina/o Mannequins Prowling the American Unconscious

Original Posting: Late September 2010; update October 2010

"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 and Guillermo Nericcio García @ 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!