STATEMENT/BIO

Michael Menchaca (they/them) is a Xicanx, Mexican-American, Mexica, Mestizx, Queer multidisciplinary visual artist from San Antonio, TX. They create artworks at the intersection of print media, painting, video sculpture, photo collage, digital animation, and new media installation. Their vector-based digital drawings blend the framework of ancient Mesoamerican Codices, European Bestiaries, Catholic Baroque imagery, Mexican devotional paintings, textile arts, and Japanese Video Games with the seductive, attention-seeking interfaces of Big Data Technologies. They have developed a digital lexicon of animal archetypes and narrative pattern designs, or their own digital codex, to assist in mythologizing and deconstructing the interwoven logic of global apartheid projects including European conquest, U.S. border imperialism, data colonialism, and AI evangelical imperialism. Through maximalist imagery and coded symbolism, Menchaca visualizes the intra-ethnic social aspects that characterize the Latinx experience across lines of class, caste, age, gender, race, nationality, neurodiversity, sexuality, and ability within a hyper-mediated American landscape.
Michael Menchaca earned their MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2015, and their BFA from Texas State University in 2011, concentrating both degrees in Printmaking. Menchaca's works are in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, D.C.; U.S. Library of Congress, D.C.; The National Gallery of Art, D.C.; Detroit Institute of Arts, MI; El Museo Del Barrio, NY; The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, AR; and Princeton University Art Museum, NJ; among others. Exhibitions include the Detroit Institute of Arts, MI; The Cleveland Museum of Art, OH; El Museo del Barrio, NY; The Davis Museum, MA; The Chrysler Museum of Art, VA; Smithsonian American Art Museum, D.C.; The Benton Museum of Art, CA; The Contemporary Austin, TX; The Lawndale Art Center, TX; The McNay Museum, TX; North Carolina Museum of Art, NC; and The Print Center New York, NY. They have been an artist-in-residence at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, ME; Vermont Studio Center, VT; the Wassaic Project, NY; the Segura Arts Studio at Notre Dame University, IN; the Serie Project at Coronado Studios, TX; The Studios at MASS MoCA, MA, and have participated as a fellow-in-residence at The Fine Arts Work Center, MA. They are one-half of the artist collective Dos Xicanx. In 2021, the US Latinx Art Forum (USLAF), supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Ford Foundation, awarded Menchaca the inaugural Latinx Artist Fellowship.

Portrait by: Anthony Francis