The artist Yvette Mayorga, clad in a black sports bra and leggings, stands arms akimbo behind a barbed wire fence near the U.S.-Mexico border. The fence is laced with tiny American flags. Mayorga’s image blinks and then disappears. This scene is quickly replaced by an ornate domestic space displaying religious figurines. That gives way to a shot of street vendors selling food and luchador masks under a bright sun. Miniaturized migrants, weathered and dirty and carrying backpacks, walk past the merchandise laid out on the ground. All the while, a remixed cumbia track plays at a manic pace, like carnival music made sinister.
The artist uses bright colors (hot pink, kelly green), confectionary sights and smells (cakes, frosting, oversize Candy Land props), and signifiers of American prosperity (palm trees, a ceramic Louis Vuitton purse) to lure in her audience. But a closer look at the elaborately staged scenes reveals darker images. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents hide in the brightly patterned wallpaper. A body peeks out from under the hood of a car. A gold nameplate necklace spells out “Illegal” in cursive script so oversize it might fit around the neck of the Statue of Liberty.
Though she was always interested in art, Mayorga didn’t visit an art museum until her late teens. Her visual references came from pop culture—she loved Hello Kitty and the Mexican-American Tejano pop star Selena—and the baroque imagery of the Catholic Church. For most of her early life, she spent summers in Jerez, Zacateca, her parents’ hometown in central Mexico. “Having that experience, of being able to be in Mexico for the whole summer and see where my parents grew up, see what the culture was like there, gave me access to a whole other visual language,” she says. “I was really interested in the religious iconography of the Virgin Mary and these really excessive decorations that were found in the church, whether it was church in Mexico or church in Moline. All of the baroque influences, now that I can name it. The gold, the angels, and the ritual in itself.”
Really Safe in My Room also contained pieces from Mayorga’s ongoing Monuments series, which she began in 2014; five of them will be on display in “Out of Easy Reach.” The monuments are sculptural totems that each represent a different person who is important to her. Ranging in height from around three to more than six feet, the pieces are complex, layered assemblages made of frosting, found objects, party decorations, acrylic paint, and an assortment of other materials relevant to that individual.
Mayorga maintains a regular studio practice, putting in a full week’s work in addition to the administrative tasks that come with regular gallery shows. She’s also a part-time art education coordinator for the National Mexican Museum of Art, where she teaches art to kids off-site at schools and community centers.
“It’s a real story of an immigrant who came to America, who made a life, who had a daughter that’s me, and how I was able to achieve going to college and follow this career of mine,” she says. “Wanting to be an artist at a young age seemed super impossible. Thinking about living in a capitalist society and having to make money, and how do you make that work? Being able to achieve that dream, I feel really thankful for that. And I feel like it’s inherent that I would want to talk about my experience growing up. Maybe another young girl seeing my work can feel like she’s being represented also, or her father’s story is being represented, or her mother’s story, to feel like we’re not aliens, that we are people. And these things happen to people, in order to achieve something greater.”
