Let the #Mextasy Invasion, 2025-2026 Begin!

BRING ¡MEXTASY! — A TRAVELING CIRCUS OF DESMADRE, DESIRE & DECONSTRUCTION 

⚡️ 2025–2026 Tour | Booking Now 

Tired of beige art shows where nothing bleeds, sweats, or argues back? ¡Mextasy! is your antidote — a border-born carnival of images and ideas that refuses to behave. Curated and conjured by William “Memo” Nericcio — author of Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the “Mexican” in America — ¡Mextasy! turns the museum wall into a bilingual hallucination. It’s a mash-up of racist Americana, pop-art remix, and Chicano/x visual thunder — part seminar, part stand-up, part séance. 

Born in Laredo, raised on Mad magazine, Derrida, and Mexican TV static, Nericcio drags the archive out of the ivory tower and into your gallery, library, or dive bar. 

🔥 See it to believe it: Photo gallery + past shows 

Denver 2024 installation 

Nepantla Cultural Arts Center, Seattle 

Boise State Pop-Up 

What You Get (Besides Goosebumps) 

Visual detonations: 100+ years of Mexican caricature turned inside-out. 

Hybrid happenings: lectures that slip into comedy, gallery talks that break into confessionals. Collaborative chaos: workshops, film nights, and bilingual brain spasms that leave people buzzing. 

How It Works 

Full circus install — Nericcio + crew transform your space. 

Pop-up guerrilla show — we hit and run, no damage deposit required. 

Zoom / hybrid setups for the cautious or cash-strapped. 

💰 Price? Negotiable. Art first, spreadsheets later. 

Who’s Survived It So Far University of Denver • UCLA • UC Riverside • Iowa State • Nepantla Arts (Seattle) • Casa Familiar (San Ysidro) • San Antonio College 

If your gallery’s got walls that can take a punch — or an audience that’s hungry for something that bites back — we should talk. 

📩 Contact: memo@sdsu.edu | textmex@me.com 🌐 More proof, madness, and mirth: mextasy.blogspot.com

New Swag in the DEPOP #Mextasy Tiendita/Shoppe! Check it out now ... SAD WALLS BE GONE!

Check it out!

WAVES OF THE SOUL by Marian Cuevas, Published by Atelier de Laredo Press

 

{M}ex Machina! #mextasy #roboticeroticelectric #textmex #eyegiene Lecture at UC RIVERSIDE

 

ChatGPT Wants Mextasy to Get Into the Action Figurine Business! #mextasy

 

Bring ¡Mextasy! A Traveling Circus of Desmadres to Your School, Gallery, University, Library, or Dive Bar! Updated for 2025-2026!

~ Last updated February 17, 2025 ~

#Mextasy is back! 2025-2026

Mextasy: Seductive Hallucinations of Latina/o Mannequins Prowling the American Unconscious is a traveling pop-up or gallery-based art show/exhibit based on the work of William "Memo" Nericcio and Guillermo Nericcio García. 

The traveling exhibition or "Circus of Desmadres" was originally curated by Leticia Gómez Franco for Casa Familiar, San Ysidro, California, and Rachel Freyman Brown, South Texas College, McAllen, Texas. Recents shows include exhibitions / performances at the University of Denver,  Boise State University,  UC Riverside (virtual via Zoom, thx Covid!)  Iowa State University and the Nepantla Cultural Arts Center, Seattle, Washington --other noteworthy gigs include performances at Northwestern University, Wabash College, California State University, San Bernardino, and Franklin & Marshall College.

Mextasy is re-imagined, interactive art and artifact exhibition that grew out of Nericcio's 2007 American Library Association award-winning 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 and the backstory for the resurgence in anti-Mexican, anti-Latina/o peoples presently), the show also features works that is "xicanosmotic," that is, works by Mexican-American artists where the delicious fusion of the Mexican/US borderlands/frontera is writ large as in the deliriously delicious artistic tracings of Raul Gonzalez III, Perry Vasquez, Rafaella Suarez, and Izel Vargas. Visitors to this page interested in having MEXTASY invade their local gallery/university of choice should contact us here.

Best Deal on the Internets! | Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the "Mexican" in America by William A. Nericcio

updated 7/22//24; posted 4/17/19

Click to enlarge | More images below

TEX{T}-MEX

SEDUCTIVE HALLUCINATIONS 

OF THE "MEXICAN" IN AMERICA

Special Dealio #Mextasy Cost to You!?

$22.00 USD + $1 shipping!

 

Also available via Bezos's monopoly engine!

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Original Proposed Cover Art
by Guillermo Nericcio García
click to enlarge

A rogues' gallery of Mexican bandits, bombshells, lotharios, and thieves saturates American popular culture. Remember Speedy Gonzalez? "Mexican Spitfire" Lupe Vélez? The Frito Bandito? Familiar and reassuring—at least to Anglos—these Mexican stereotypes are not a people but a text, a carefully woven, articulated, and consumer-ready commodity. In this original, provocative, and highly entertaining book, William Anthony Nericcio deconstructs Tex[t]-Mexicans in films, television, advertising, comic books, toys, literature, and even critical theory, revealing them to be less flesh-and-blood than "seductive hallucinations," less reality than consumer products, a kind of "digital crack."

Nericcio engages in close readings of rogue/icons Rita Hayworth, Speedy Gonzalez, Lupe Vélez, and Frida Kahlo, as well as Orson Welles' film Touch of Evil and the comic artistry of Gilbert Hernandez. He playfully yet devastatingly discloses how American cultural creators have invented and used these and other Tex[t]-Mexicans since the Mexican Revolution of 1910, thereby exposing the stereotypes, agendas, phobias, and intellectual deceits that drive American popular culture. This sophisticated, innovative history of celebrity Latina/o mannequins in the American marketplace takes a quantum leap toward a constructive and deconstructive next-generation figuration/adoration of Latinos in America.

What do you get for your hard-earned twenty+ bucks??? A new, hermetically-sealed (for your protection!) copy of William Nericcio's 2007 ALA award-winning book, Tex{t}-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the "Mexican" in America.  And at a ¡venta venta, venga venga! sale price as Jeff Bezos at Amazon is trying to charge $27.95 for this book! If you want me to "break the seal" and sign the book, just order here and then email me to memo@sdsu.edu and tell me how you want it inscribed!

Evil Jeff Bezos Price?    27.95 USD 

Special Dealio #Mextasy Cost to You!?

$22.00 USD + $1 shipping!

More images from the book!

 

Mextasy Update | SMU Edition