LatchKey Gallery is proud to present Haciendo Caras by Luis A. Sahagun, his first solo exhibition with the gallery. Composed of drawing, painting, sculpture, and performance, Sahagun’s practice is a visual manifestation of personal history and mythical heritage. Haciendo Caras will be on view at 173 Henry Street, NYC, from March 25 – April 30, 2022.
Born in Guadalajara, Mexico, Sahagun immigrated to the United States at the age of four. Undocumented, Sahagun grew up with a sense of cultural and spiritual disconnect while surviving in communities victimized by gang-related violence. As the grandson of a curandera and himself a curandero apprentice, Sahagun transforms his art making into a mystical instrument that conjures indigenous spiritualities to embody the aesthetics of cultural resistance and colonial disruption.
Haciendo Caras examines the various symbolic manifestations of the face. Its topography, carved by the blade of experience, is composed of layers formed by survival and embraced by the divine spirits of ancestors. Referencing Gloria Anzaldua’s introduction to an anthology of the same title, “making faces means to put on a face,… the surface of the body that is the most notably inscribed by social structures, marked with instructions on how to be. …. as mestizas – biologically and/or culturally mixed – we have different surfaces for each aspect of identity, each inscribed by a particular subculture.”
Sahagun’s decade of experience as a construction worker and laborer is evident throughout the exhibition. Raw wood, metal, rope, foam, silicone and glue embellish the portraits of his reconstructed forbearers. Within the terrain of each canvas exists meticulous charcoal drawings of conjured indigenous spirits. Each of the works in Haciendo Caras is significant to Sahagun’s artistic and ancestral journey, none more so than Maria Bonita, Maria del Alma, a colossal painting of the artist’s mother. Standing at nearly six feet in height, the figure mimics the majesty of the Byzantine illustration of Maria Antioch. Her imperial pose is shrouded in an ornate mantel made up of construction materials and beads, honoring the material’s ancient use in rituals of birth and death. Contributing to her regal stature, she holds a specter adorned by a pre-Columbian vessel at the finial. Crowning her head is the ubiquitous Chicago Bulls baseball cap joining the various surfaces of Sahagun’s identity and the subcultures that exist within.
Luis Sahagun (b. 1982) lives and works in Chicago, IL. He received his undergraduate degree from Southern Illinois University- Carbondale and his MFA from Northern Illinois University.
He has exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, IL; Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art, Roswell, NM; The National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago, IL; DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, IL; the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Lansing, MI, among others.
Sahagun has held residencies at the Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program in Roswell, NM, Arquetopia, Oaxaca, MX, Bolt Artist-in-Residence with Chicago Artist Coalition, Chicago, IL, Mana Contemporary in Miami, FL and was an Artist in Residence for Critical Race Studies at Michigan State University. He has received the Jack & Eleanor Olsen Fellowship for Artistic Excellence, the Jeffrey Lunsford Creativity Fellowship and is a 3Arts Awardee, which honors artists with unique voices helping to shape, shift, and touch the world.
The gallery is located at 173 Henry Street, NY, NY.
For further information and press inquiries, please contact info@latchkeygallery.com
LatchKey Gallery | 173 Henry Street | info@latchkeygallery.com | 646.213.9070