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Aliens Sans Frontières

Aliens Sans Frontières
Usage Conditions Apply
Artist
Enrique Chagoya, born 1953
Sitter
Enrique Chagoya, born 1953
Date
2016
Type
Print
Medium
Six color lithographs on handmade Amate paper
Dimensions
Image/Sheet: 60.2 × 70.9 cm (23 11/16 × 27 15/16")
Mount: 60.3 × 81.5 cm (23 3/4 × 32 1/16")
Topic
Costume\Jewelry\Earring
Costume\Dress Accessory\Eyeglasses
Personal Attribute\Facial Hair\Mustache
Personal Attribute\Facial Hair\Beard
Costume\Headgear\Headdress\Crown
Costume\Headgear\Turban
Collage
Self-portrait
Food\Fruit
Human Figures\Baby
Enrique Chagoya: Visual Arts\Artist
Enrique Chagoya: Male
Enrique Chagoya: Education and Scholarship\Educator\Professor
Enrique Chagoya: Society and Social Change\Reformer\Activist
Enrique Chagoya: Awards
Portrait
Credit Line
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Restrictions & Rights
Usage conditions apply
Copyright
© 2016 Enrique Chagoya
Object number
C/NPG.2017.84
Exhibition Label
Painter, printmaker, and professor at Stanford University, Enrique Chagoya uses his art for activist causes and also uses seemingly cartoonish or naïve imagery as an entryway for discussions of complex cultural and geopolitical issues. After researching his DNA ancestry, Chagoya learned that his ances- tors were Native American (Central Mexico), European, Ashkenazi, Middle Eastern/North African, Sub-Saharan African, and East and South Asian. This work, entitled Aliens Sans Frontières (Aliens without borders), includes six self-portraits of the artist, each drawing on a pernicious stereotype of a certain ethnicity. Printed from nine plates of mylar sheets and hand drawn using acrylic paint, pencils, and toned washes, the work is a highly technical, accomplished print—graphic in its geometric patterning, gritty in its evocation of street graffiti, and subversive in its crisscrossing of gender and class lines.
Pintor, grabador y profesor de la Universidad de Stanford, Enrique Chagoya utiliza su arte para el activismo. Sus imágenes de apariencia caricaturesca o naíf le sirven también para adentrarse en discusiones de temas culturales y geopolíticos complejos. Chagoya investigó su ascendencia mediante pruebas de ADN y descubrió que tenía antepasados nativos de América del Norte (México central), Europa (incluidos los askenazi de Europa central y oriental), Oriente Medio/África del Norte, África subsahariana y el este y sur de Asia. Aliens Sans Frontières contiene seis autorretratos del artista, cada uno inspirado en un estereotipo pernicioso de alguna etnicidad. Impresa a partir de nueve placas de Mylar y dibujada a mano con pintura acrílica, lápiz y tonalidades en aguadas, la obra es sumamente técnica y lograda: gráfica en sus patrones geométricos, cruda en su evocación del graffiti callejero y subversiva en su cruce de fronteras de género y clase.
Data Source
National Portrait Gallery
Location
Currently not on view