At a time when building a wall to keep out Mexicans is a hot topic north of the border, it's refreshing to see what Mexicans themselves are thinking about.
Walls are not on their minds, nor in evidence in "Sus Voces: Women Printmakers From Mexico," a handsome and thematically rich show of woodcuts, lithographs, etchings and other original prints by nine contemporary Mexican artists.
Political undercurrents do ripple through the women's work, but they're never partisan, nationalistic or even very obvious. This is not poster art or propaganda. Instead, the 45 images refract contemporary Mexican culture through observations of urban life, personal experiences and such familiar emotions as love, longing and melancholy. Nuanced and complex, they are a quiet rebuke to the bombastic caricatures of Mexico that are so rife in parts of the United States.
In fact, misleading stereotypes saturate both cultures.
"When I visit my family in Mexico City, they ask how I can live here in the U.S. because it's so violent," said Maria Cristina Tavera, the show's bilingual/bicultural curator, who grew up in Minnesota and holds dual citizenship in the two countries. "They wonder how I dare send my children to school because of all the school-related shootings here."
As in the United States, parts of Mexico are afflicted with random or drug-fueled violence, she said, and people react much the same way.
"You are aware of it and the implications of what could happen, so you protect yourself to survive just as we do here," Tavera said.
Beyond politics
Only Mercedes López Calvo addresses the topic head-on in woodcuts that could have been inspired by news photos. One depicts a circle of men lying face down on the ground, hands clasped behind their necks, as if awaiting arrest or execution. The other shows three bound bodies with shirts pulled over their heads. But the same artist turns to more pacific subjects in a suite of keenly observed leaves, mottled, tangled and curled together.
