La Raza Cósmica 20XX
La Raza Cósmica 20XX
Suite of 16 screen prints on Stonehenge Pearl Grey paper
Edition of 10
21” wide x 22.5” tall
2019
Reviews have been published in the following essays:
Casta State of Mind: Michael Menchaca and the Graphic Revolution of Caste
Making La Raza Cósmica 20XX
La Raza Cósmica 20XX La Raza Cósmica 20X5 is a print series rooted in the 18th century tradition of Casta Genre painting, fundamental to enshrining a racialized social hierarchy in Spanish colonial territories in the New World. Casta paintings visually ascribed social desirability to the heterogenous mixed-race mestizo population, encoding assumed characteristics to one’s race, class, gender, and other abstracted physical traits; determining one's fixed position in society, or caste. In my reinterpretation of Casta paintings, I’ve incorporated a layer of smart technologies to the familial portraits to suggest how modern-day social containment is predicated on technological intervention and dependency. New technologies remain essential instruments for reinforcing the status-quo and, as is the case with the Castas, for enforcing colorist, race-based social hierarchies. In reclaiming the title to Jose Vasconcelos' controversial 20th century mestizo social identity theory, La Raza Cósmica, in which he presents an argument for White supremacy, my aim is to contradict the power dynamics of the racial hierarchy established by the Spanish crown and debunk the validity of racial classification systems.
In order to produce these prints, I essentially translated digitally composed vector graphics into a set of stencils used in the screen-printing process to print a total of 6 colors of ink onto a sheet of paper. Repeat the printing process.
I worked on this series with my esteemed colleague Julia Samuels in their studio called Overpass Projects in Pawtucket, Rhode Island in the summer of 2019.
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