Feliz Navidad from MEXTASY!

New Mextasy Seattle Show Prints | Carlos Fuentes Homage

Maricruz Olivier Mextasy Print over at the Textmex Galleryblog

What is Mextasy? {Mextasy, Coming to Seattle, WA, and the University of Washington, Late February 2013}

Originally posted, September 14, 2011; updated Friday, December 7, 2012

Mextasy: Seductive Hallucinations of Latina/o Mannequins Prowling the American Unconscious is a traveling art show/exhibit based on the work of William "Memo" Nericcio and Guillermo Nericcio García. The show, originally curated by Rachel Freyman Brown, South Texas College, McAllen, Texas, has just finished its run at Western Unversity, London, Ontario. It has previously toured at the Centro Cultural de La Raza, in Balboa Park, San Diego, California; at Ann Arbor, Michigan for the Department of American Studies, University of Michigan; in San Ysidro, California (as Xicanoholic) at Casa Familiar; in McAllen, Texas at South Texas College's Pecan campus Art Gallery; at Laredo, Texas at the the Laredo Center of the Arts; additionally, it had an April 8, 2011 opening at the Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies, University of Hawai'i at Manoa; and a run at the Fullerton Public Library with Gustavo Arellano hosting! September 2011 saw Mextasy invade San Antonio College for a Tex[t]-Mex reading/signing and an exclusive South Texas MEXTASY exhibition. In 2012, Mextasy was sighted at Ohio State University; at the University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario; at theFront, San Ysidro, California; and in Boulder, Colorado, at the University of Colorado for the Ethnic Studies Department;  

Mextasy both reflects and expands upon 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 "xicanosmotic," that is, works by Mexican-American artists where the delicious tattoo of the Mexican/US frontera is writ large as in the deliriously delicious semiotic tracings of Raul Gonzalez III, Perry Vasquez, Izel Vargas, and Marisela Norte.

Visitors to this page interested in having MEXTASY invade their local gallery/university of choice should contact us here. For more information and an interview with the curator/artist, go here.

Here's a new print for the Mextasy show at the University of Washington in Seattle, February, 2013.

CANCELLED!!! | RESCHEDULING | Two Mextasy Shows! NYC! @SVA/DCRIT, MANHATTAN & The OBSERVATORY ROOM, Brooklyn!

NYC November Gigs Cancelled....

RESCHEDULING IN PROGRESS--another SANDY-caused mess!

Tuesday, November 27, 2012 is a big day for Mextasy, with two exhibitions/presentations/readings/signings taking place in the Big Apple.  The first one, is at SVA/D*CRIT, part of their 'working lunch' series, at 1pm; the 2nd is at the Observatory at 8pm... Hit the posters below for more info!  I will be reading a little from Tex[t]-Mex at each presentation as well as selling/signing books and prints from the Mextasy show (at huge discounts!)...  Be there!

more info

MEXTASY! Invading New York City November 27, 2012!!! At the Observatory, Brooklyn & SVA/D*CRIT, The School of Visual Arts

more to come... INFO

mas info

Remarkable Matthew Rolston High Resolution Photographs of Salma Hayek Camouflaged!

translated Russian site, here.

Once Again, Rita Hayworth...

source trail

alternate

Mextasy: Wonder Woman Edition, Featuring the Work of Israel 'Izzy' Rico

israel 'izzy' rico

guillermo nericcio garcía

poster for the London, Ontario/Western readings

Touch of Evil, Mextasy Poster for the New Upcoming University of Guelph Lecture

New Mextasy Poster Honoring Raza Unida Veteranas!

"The Plane, The Plane!" Ricardo Montalbán, MEXTASY PRINT...

"The Plane, The Plane!" Ricardo Montalbán, MEXTASY PRINT...

A Huge, Warm GRACIAS to All the Cool Folks at Ohio State University

Mextasy Exhibition Opening at Ohio State University, September 5 & 6, 2012 | William "Memo" Nericcio y Guillermo Nericcio García

Mextasy opens at the Ohio State University on September 5, 2012; 
here is some of the backstory on the exhibit.

EXHIBIT

OPENING RECEPTION / Q&A with Frederick Aldama

FEATURE LECTURE: "Desired, Despised, Worshipped, and Sacrificed: Sex, Race, and the Latina/o Body in the 21st Century"

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 [Colorado]?

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.

OSU Poster

"Desired, Despised, Worshipped, and Sacrificed: Sex, Race, and the Latina/o Body in the 21st Century" | Mextasy Exhibition Opening Gala Events at the Ohio State University September 5 & 6, 2012

click to enlarge

"Desired, Despised, Worshipped, and Sacrificed: Sex, Race, and the Latina/o Body in the 21st Century" is the title of my lecture at Ohio State University--part of the Mextasy exhibition opening gala September 5 & 6, 2012. More info here: http://mextasy.blogspot.com/ and at OSU here:http://www.ohiounion.com/events.aspx/2012/9?a=2

Here's the whole line-up:

EXHIBIT: http://multiculturalcenter.osu.edu/events.aspx/2012/9/5/20088/mextasy?d=8

OPENING RECEPTION / Q&A with Frederick Aldama
http://multiculturalcenter.osu.edu/events.aspx/2012/9/5/20087/opening-exhibit-mextasy-and-just-do-it-latino-studies?d=8

FEATURE LECTURE:
"Desired, Despised, Worshipped, and Sacrificed:
Sex, Race, and the Latina/o Body in the 21st Century"
http://multiculturalcenter.osu.edu/events.aspx/2012/9/6/20112/l-a-s-e-r-and-the-multicultural-cente-presents-dr-william-anthony-nericcio-professor-san-diego-state-university?d=8

New Info Poster & OSU Rita Promo Poster

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

OSU/LASER MEXTASY SHOW PRINT: Ethnic Mannequins Series 7: I/Eye, Eva

One of the most popular American star in television in the late 20th and early 21st century, Eva Longoria re-embodies the form and allure of the Latina bombshell, born in the early days of Hollywood.

I/Eye, Eva

2012, Guillermo Nericcio García
digital collage

I/Eye, Eva picks up on the idea of the "ethnic mannequin" that I toyed around with in Tex[t]-Mex--there, in a mad synthesis of ideas lifted from Gayatri Spivak (the subject effect), Jacques Derrida (the trace), Frantz Fanon (darkness and psychopathology), and Edmundo Desnoes ("Cuba Made Me So" | Latina/o objectification), I tried to document the dynamic processes wherein Latina/o archetypes transmogrify/evolve.

What's special about Eva (and what she has in common with Rita Hayworth), is that she is the head of her own production companies and businesses--not all too successful if wikipedia's resources are accurate (look up her Beso restaurant biz based out of Vegas--here's a Wall Street Journal piece). This connection between the star (the "victim" in the familiar objectification of woman argument) and the semiotic means of production surrounding her (graphic) reproduction complicates things for the contemporary arbiter of Latina semiotic signage.

The piece for the OSU show grafts together photography by Chilean camera wizard Nino Muñoz, in British lads' magazine Arena's January 2007 issue, as well as work from the June 2009 issue of GQ Mexico (still looking for the photographer's identity). Two years apart, a 20th century ethnic mannequin stars in two photoshoots that feature images with ropes and chains, each image evoking unseen puppeteers of sorts.

Coincidence? I would have to ask Eva and am till waiting on a callback!

New Posters for the Ohio State University MEXTASY Exhibition and Lectures!

test poster with info regarding the two presentations....

cool LASER poster...

more info here...

alt look grungy film version

New Frida- and Rita-inspired Promo Print for the September 2012 Ohio State University/LASER Mextasy Show!

link

~ schedule ~

September 5

Opening reception & Q&A 
with the Artist

3:30-5:30PM
Multicultural Center

September 6

Lecture

Dr. William Nericcio 

Director, Master of Arts in Liberal Arts & Sciences

3:30-5:30PM
Multicultural Center

more info to come...

MEXTASY! Open in San Ysidro, Califas through AUGUST @ the FRONT, CASA FAMILIAR

click to semiotically engorge!

Cholafied: Pee-wee Herman Edition

Cholafied: Pee-wee Herman Edition

Mextasy! Coming to Ohio State University the First Week of September, 2012....

more: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151026358563653&l=9a556da1b2

Gustavo Arellano, Daniel Hernandez, Memo Nericcio y Los Hollywood @ the Front, San Ysidro | a new CHICANOHOLICS ANONYMOUS gig... MEXTASY is coming to your local hybrid wonderland, San Ysidro! Tuesday, May 22, 2012... free! gratis! open! wild! now!

...a new CHICANOHOLICS ANONYMOUS gig...

MEXTASY is coming to your local hybrid wonderland, San Ysidro!


Tuesday, May 22, 2012... free! gratis! open! wild! now! 


featuring gluttonous sized portions of :

Gustavo Arellano reading from TACO USA
http://amzn.to/mextasy_tacoUSA

William Nericcio reading from TEXTMEX
http://amzn.to/textmex_mextasy

Daniel Hernandez reading from DOWN AND DELIRIOUS IN MEXICO
http://amzn.to/down_delirious_mextasy

and for dessert: the music of LOS HOLLYWOOD
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTLe1byAnPg

@THE FRONT!
Fronteras Festival 2012

http://textmex.blogspot.com/2012/05/mextasy-show-at-front-casa-familiar-san.html

come one, come all, it's free and good for you!

a new print for theFRONT show, Casa Familiar

rosario castellanos

click to enlarge

Scary Mexicans--adaptation of rad Tom Tomorrow cartoon...

 

click to enlarge