During her research on primitive currencies and cultural cannibalism, Cuevas came across the Donald Duck comic book issue “The Stone Money Mystery,” where Donald goes on a quest to find missing museum objects. Cuevas’s America (2006) is a wall painting of a comic Donald Duck wallowing in a heap of gold coins, alluding to Mexico’s postrevolutionary mural tradition. The mural’s background is one of the earliest illustrations of flora and fauna in the American continent, juxtaposed with a reference to America as having bountiful natural resources available to be exploited, and the historical use of comics as ideological tools. The piece also recalls the politics of the Mexican muralists Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco filtered through contemporary narratives of identity, otherness, and power. Driven first by multiculturalism in the United States, then by globalization worldwide, this Disney reference also refers to the notorious book How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic , originally published during the Chilean revolution as Para Leer al Pato Donald before it was banned and burned. Writing from exile in 1975, the authors signed the preface to the English edition as follows: “Mr. Disney, we are returning your Duck. Feathers plucked and well-roasted. Look inside, you can see the handwriting on the wall, our hands still writing on the wall: Donald, Go Home!”
Minerva Cuevas’s socially engaged practice encompasses a range of strategies and mediums, including film, installation, performance, and site-specific public intervention. Cuevas aims to provide insight into the complex economic and political structures of the social realm, offering playful possibilities for their subversion. Often manifesting as small but poignant interruptions into the everyday realm, Cuevas’s modest acts infiltrate and disrupt economic and social systems, drawing attention to the aesthetics of popular imagery such as corporate branding, political symbols and slogans, and even comic books.
Mario Garcia Torres films a game of Charades among professional actors guessing the former North Korean dictator’s favorite Hollywood films...
Stretching between San Pedro and the beach in Altata, Sinaloa, there is a 40 km road where there are three invisible borders controlled by rivalling armed groups...
In Up All Night, Waiting for the Chelsea Hotel Magic to Spark My Creativity Mario García Torres constructs and documents a hypothetical scene, situating himself within a lineage of artists and creatives that used to congregate at the historic hotel...
Gabriel Orozco comments: “In the exhibition [Documenta 11, Kassel, 2002], I tried to connect with the photographs I took in Mali in July...
In his posters, prints, and installations, Erick Beltrán employs the language and tools of graphic design, linguistics, typography, and variations in alphabetical forms across cultures; he is specifically interested in how language and meaning form structures that can be misconstrued as universal...
Pablo Rasgado’s paintings and installations serve as a visual record of contemporary urban human behavior...
Fridge-Freezer is a 2-channel video installation where Yoshua Okón explores the darker side of suburbia, d escribed by the artist as “ the ideal environment for a numb existence of passive consumerism and social a nd environmental disengagement...
In his posters, prints, and installations, Erick Beltrán employs the language and tools of graphic design, linguistics, typography, and variations in alphabetical forms across cultures; he is specifically interested in how language and meaning form structures that can be misconstrued as universal...
Pablo Rasgado’s paintings and installations serve as a visual record of contemporary urban human behavior...
The video Swimming in rivers of Glue is composed of various images of nature, exploring the themes of exploration of space and its colonization...
Gabriel Orozco comments: “In the exhibition [Documenta 11, Kassel, 2002], I tried to connect with the photographs I took in Mali in July...
Mario Garcia Torres films a game of Charades among professional actors guessing the former North Korean dictator’s favorite Hollywood films...
Wright Imperial Hotel (2004) is a sort of bow and arrow made out of feathers, a São Paulo phone book, and other materials...
In One Must , an image of a pair of scissors, accompanied by the words of work’s title, poses an ominous question about the relationship between the image and the text...
Donald of Doom Tank (2008) is a replica of a vintage metal toy with Donald Duck’s image one side and a soldier on the other...
Pedro Reyes’s Los Mutantes ( Mutants , 2012) is composed of 170 plates that combine characters from ancient and modern mythologies...
Giant Rubber Duck artist on why size matters – ‘instead of us looking at it, it is now looking at us’ – and his miniatures on show in Seoul | South China Morning Post Advertisement Advertisement Art + FOLLOW Get more with my NEWS A personalised news feed of stories that matter to you Learn more Dutch artist and “Rubber Duck” creator Florentijn Hofman in Hong Kong in June 23 for the return of his giant inflatable artwork to Victoria Harbour, this time with a twin...