“Codex City of Mirrors” by Chagoya. Photo courtesy of Enrique Chagoya.
Join the School of Art in hosting its Green Honors Chair, Enrique Chagoya, a multidisciplinary artist and professor at Stanford University, on March 26.
The Cecil H. and Ida Green Honors Chair program brings scholars and artists of national and international stature to campus for short residencies to promote new ideas and community collaboration.
Chagoya will present an artist talk on his unique artistic practice of “reverse anthropology.” Drawing from his experiences on both sides of the United States-Mexico border, Chagoya’s works incorporate secular, popular and religious icons from the ancient Americas, Latin America and the United States. He will discuss how he juxtaposes these icons to explore cultural clashes and their ongoing impact.
“We are excited to welcome Enrique Chagoya to TCU,” said Lori Diel, Kay and Velma Kimbell Chair of Art History. “I’ve always been a fan of his work because of the way he mixes icons from different cultures, such as an Aztec ruler battling Superman, in ways that are both humorous and thought-provoking.”
In addition to his artist talk, Chagoya will visit undergraduate courses on the Art of Mexico and Artists’ Books, lead a graduate seminar on Contemporary Art and conduct studio visits with graduate students to discuss their work.
Chagoya’s Global Impact
Currently a professor at Stanford University’s Department of Art and Art History, Chagoya’s work is in prestigious collections including The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others.
“Popol Vuh de la Abuelita del AHUIZOTE/Codex” by Chagoya. Photo courtesy of Enrique Chagoya.
Chagoya has received numerous awards, including a National Academy of Arts and Letters Fellowship, residencies at Giverny and the Cité Internationale des Arts in France, a Tiffany Fellowship, induction into the National Academy of Design, a Lifetime Achievement Award in Printmaking from the Southern Graphics Conference International and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Exploring Icons and Cultural Identity
Chagoya, born and raised in Mexico City, was inspired by his father, a Banco de Mexico employee and artist, who taught him color theory and sketching early on. He studied political economy at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and contributed political cartoons to union newsletters before directing rural development projects in Veracruz.
Enrique Chagoya. Photo courtesy of the McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, San Francisco.
In 1979, Chagoya moved to Berkeley, California, where he began freelancing as an illustrator and graphic designer. Disheartened by the political focus of local economics programs, he shifted to art, earning a BFA in printmaking from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1984. He went on to complete his MA and MFA at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1987, and received an honorary doctorate from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2017.
Chagoya has been exhibiting his work nationally and internationally for over two decades, focusing on the recurring themes of colonialism and oppression that persist in contemporary American foreign policy.
Free admission.
Learn more about Chagoya’s artist talk.