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Artist Enrique Chagoya, whose works are included in the current exhibition Mexicanisimo through Artists’ Eyes, will speak at the San Jose Museum of Art on Thursday, May 17, 2012, at 7 PM. Chagoya will be joined in conversation by Barbaro Martinez-Ruiz, assistant professor of art and art history at Stanford University. They will discuss the diverse aspects of culture and traditions that Chagoya explores in his paintings and prints. Tickets to the program, part of the Museum’s Creative Minds series, are $10 ($6 for members), and include admission to the Museum, which is open until 8 PM on May 17. Tickets are available online at LiveSV.com.
Drawing from his experiences living on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border in the late 1970s, and also in Europe in the late 1990s, Enrique Chagoya juxtaposes secular, popular, and religious symbols in order to address the ongoing cultural clash between the United States, Latin America and the world as well. He uses familiar pop icons to create deceptively friendly points of entry for the discussion of complex issues. Chagoya is currently a professor at Stanford University’s Department of Art and Art History. His work can be found in many public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and the San Jose Museum of Art.
Bárbaro Martínez-Ruiz is an art historian with expertise in African and Caribbean artistic, visual, and religious practices. Born and raised in Cuba, Martínez-Ruiz taught Art History at Havana’s High Institute of Art for five years prior to coming to the United States. Martinez-Ruiz has both curated exhibitions on contemporary and African art and presented his own multimedia work in solo and group exhibitions in New York and Alabama. Martínez-Ruiz completed his masters and doctoral studies in the History of Art department at Yale University in 2004.
Third Thursday evening hours are generously supported by grants from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Richard A. Karp Charitable Foundation, and the Koret Foundation.
