The Politics of Desire: Yvette Mayorga

Friday, March 3, 2017 to Thursday, March 23, 2017
Opening Reception: Friday, March 3, 6-9pm

The Chicago Artists Coalition is pleased to present The Politics of Desire, a solo exhibition featuring BOLT Resident Yvette Mayorga. 

The Politics of Desire presents an uncanny utopian vision of the American Dream gone awry. Intertwined between signifiers of immigrant rituals of celebration—festive ornamentation, confection, accumulated candy, frosting, and found objects—the traumatic realities of the immigrant experience after crossing the U.S./Mexico border subtly begin to emerge. Vibrant fantasies of familial domestic interiors and savory sculptures of cake frosting are ironically juxtaposed against violent undertones of race relations on borderlands. Mayorga’s work boldly confronts the paradoxes of the American Dream—state-sanctioned violence, the American body politic, home invasion, and the fragility of immigrant citizenship.

Her immersive installations are a sensory experience that offer an accessible platform to discuss issues of race, identity, gender, and Latin stereotypes. Through an ironic strategy that critiques the insatiable desires of capitalist society, she invites viewers to enter a dream-like state—where the past, present, and future converge into one continuum of memory.