~ Last updated March 19, 2022 ~
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 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 both reflects on and expands upon 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.
