Alida Cervantes
Region: Pacific Coast
My artwork is an exploration of power relationships. My paintings,
drawings, and mixed-media work examine hierarchies, question
dominant historical narratives, and create imagined spaces
where sex, love, and emotions are both freed and repressed. As
an inheritor of Mexico’s colonial cultural discourse, my work
draws from my own experiences of oppression and desire as a
white, upper-class Mexican woman. My daily commute across the
Mexico/US border provides the springboard into my investigations
of racial, gender, and class relationships and perceptions on
both sides of the border. I use fantasy, the grotesque, and dark
humor in ambiguous, semi-narrative works that implicate wider
narratives of colonial and postcolonial representation.