Most of Chicano artist Jimmy Centeno’s multi-media work tilts philosophical and carries the influence of story tellers from the Global South and Mesoamerican mythology. His art attempts to narrow the distance between borders, color/race, and class, to bridge and stitch together our differences. Jimmy also participates in international explorations of philosophy and aesthetics. México Solidarity Project co-founder Bill Gallegos recently interviewed Jimmy about his latest Los Angeles exhibit and more.
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Bill Gallegos: How has Mexican history and philosophy influenced your art?
Jimmy Centeno: I am a worker above being Chicano, Mexican, Latin American, an artist, and so on. I’m also all of those identities at the same time. But in terms of things Mexican, my first influences began with mother's homeschooling on Mexican history through family stories. I was in constant contact with the culture and the people. To me, each person is history. An example is my Una Mochila Sospechosa (“A Suspicious Backpack”), a work inspired by a recent art collaboration with activist and artist Mario Ávila from Guatemala. In the 1980s, during the civil war in Guatemala, the Guatemalan military stopped Mario. They suspected he might be a guerrillero because he was wearing a backpack. They told him that “all guerillas wear backpacks”!
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My artwork reflects Mexico's Indigenous cosmology, a de-colonial philosophy at odds with modernity, part of a long tradition of resistance against western imposition. My work centers the marginalized, the workers, the dispossessed and racialized communities excluded from history. I find Miguel León Portilla’s translations of Nahualt literature an inspiration: history told from the indigenous point of view. I am interested in the polysynthesis in Nahuatl and Mayan language. They carry rhythm and movement. But not everything in my work reflects resistance and struggle. We have much to be proud of and much to celebrate: the creative process, the mythical and the mystical in our cultura, the beauty of the land.
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What Mexican artistic traditions and techniques do you draw from?
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The Mexican mural aesthetic, in particular Los Tres Grandes, David Alfaro Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco, and Diego Rivera. In the liberatory content and concern for all of humanity in Siqueiros's work, in Orozco’s focus on the fetishism of power, elitism, and the barbarity of wars, and in Diego Rivera’s rendition of workers, I see links to my own class background and to all workers of the world. You can see aspects of Uruguayan artist Joaquín Torres-García in my work. He explored artistic traditions in South America’s pre-Hispanic cultures, opening the way for a new consciousness of artistic and cultural identities in las Americas.
I also incorporate traditional Mexican organic art-making techniques and use of earthly materials, as well as the playful Mexican poetic custom of employing words with double meaning of words, as reflected in my Un Ojo Cerrado y Tres Noches de Amor.
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What do you see as the relationship between Mexican art and the art produced by Chicanos in El Norte?
Chicano Art comes in many strata, one bourgeois, porous in themes, and others closer to adornments for the establishment. Then there is socially conscious art that amplifies what it means to be Mexican in the US. Aztlán is not just a myth on the origins of Tenochtitlán. It is an Indigenous cosmic link beyond western concepts of being and existing.
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Mexican art reminds Chican@s here in el Norte about our Mexican heritage. And Chican@ art reminds Mexican artists about our reality in El Norte. But Chican@ and Mexican art have much in common in addressing questions of migration/class struggle/history/revolution/ justice/solidarity/feminism. Mexico’s art has a strong current of internationalism, something that has not recently been as strong in Chican@ art. I hope my art can help rekindle solidarity with Latin America and the rest of the Global South.
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You’ve worked a lot with African American artists. What do you see as the connection between black and brown in the art world?
The history of struggle leads both to create art deeply infused with the spirit of justice and the weight of our determination for a just world. That makes for a very strong link between our communities.
Do you make art as a contribution to the movement for social change?
In my current exhibition, you can see conceptual artwork dedicated to Karl Marx, a reference rarely seen in any contemporary art. The capitalist culture of individualism makes many people unconscious of their working-class backgrounds, and that undercuts the possibilities of solidarity across the entire class, regardless of race, gender nationality, and other differences. I hope my art can bring an awareness that can lead to a re-examination of the role of the working class in society — and give hope for transformation.
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