“(My work) is based on the idea that history is told by those who win wars.... The world is endlessly re-mapped and re-named, with new rules and rulers.... I decided to invent my own account of the many possible stories—from Cortez to the border patrol.”
—Enrique Chagoya
Enrique Chagoya: I was at the San Francisco Art Institute from 1981 to 1984, during the years of US intervention wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador in Central America and the presidency of Ronald Reagan. I did cartoons, mostly out of protest, like big charcoal drawings of Ronald Reagan as Mickey Mouse and Pinocchio. I didn’t want to make art to sell; I didn’t want to make beautiful things. I was interested more in activism, and was doing solidarity work with Nicaragua and El Salvador. The Constructivist ideals got translated into a different format, which was cartooning, large-format drawing, and etching. The San Francisco Art Institute was great for this transition, because it was a place where anything goes. I decided anything goes for me, and not to be limited by the idea of abstraction as the end-all of painting. My full exploration of political imagery was also triggered by an exhibition organized by Lucy Lippard in 1984. It was called Artists Call Against Intervention in Central America. The exhibition took place in different cities, and I was included in the local chapter. They collected money to be sent to the literacy campaign in Nicaragua, and the students and many local artists raised some money here through the SFAI Humanities Department. Then I met other artists who were involved in politics. That left a permanent mark on my work.
Jennifer Samet: You did your graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley. Joan Brown was one of your teachers there. I’m curious what she talked about. [Joan Brown was a student at SFAI in the 1950s, and taught there for some years before being hired at UC Berkeley.—Ed.]
EC: Joan Brown was my advisor in the graduate program, so she critiqued my work. We had amazing exchanges about mythology. She used to travel to Mexico to the Maya territories. We talked about pre-Columbian mythology, books, history, and culture. I began to do some little boxes with pre-Columbian imagery and she loved them.
—excerpt from Jennifer Samet, “Beer with a Painter: Enrique Chagoya,” Hyperallergic, August 2016
NZ
Secondary Connections
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