Enrique Chagoya

Born in 1953, Mexico D.F
Lives in San Francisco

Enrique Chagoya’s latest print is “LIFE AT THE BORDER OF LANGUAGE”. The artist describes this work as follows:

“In this print, a geographic/physical border, such as the US/Mexico border wall, is a symbol of many other walls that exist between people. These other walls may be less obvious (like gender, class, ethnic, religious, and national origin stereotypes, among others), but as real as the physical ones. Yet, we are all one human species, despite our external differences. We realize this when we decide to cross over any border. The experience of crossing expands what language (visual or phonetic) can explain only in a limited way. Among the characters lining the wall in my print, the child represents an innocent mind still free of misrepresentations. Ancient line drawings between the portraits portray how pre-Columbian people represented themselves.”

In 2000, Chagoya became a citizen of the United States. He is currently Associate Professor of Art at Stanford University where he received the Dean’s Award in the Humanities in 1998. In 2013, ARTIUM, Basque Centre-Museum of Contemporary Art presented the exhibition Cannibal Palimpsest, Chagoya’s first exhibition in a European museum.

Chagoya’s work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The LA County Museum, The National Museum of American Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Modern Art, Yale University Art Gallery and The New York Public Library among others.

Shark's Ink