The New Inspirational Movement

These images represent my first foray into my Raza Zombies series. They were inspired by the single best mainstream comic book of the 21st century: Marvel Zombies. Marvel Zombies re-imagines classic superheroes as flesh eating zombies. After reading it I felt compelled to do some zombie transformations on a few of my own personal and iconic heroes. I think we’ve exhausted just about every other form of representation of these figures. More to come fo’ sure.

I don’t actually own a Microsoft X-Box but I’m pretty sure Che would kick ass at Halo 2…That is if he was willing to sully his hands with the most oppressively capitalistic video game system out there. But hey! Even my most hardcore communist friends enjoy a little X-Box behind closed doors.

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The Artist circa 1978 with Cartoon Snake Print

Rene Trujillo and I have been having a discussion about nepantla, an Indigenous word meaning “torn between two ways”, and two visionaries, Carlos Fuentes and Gloria Anzaldua. Our conversation has inspired me to write this post after two sleepless nights.

I first want to say that much of what has been on my mind is about self definition as a person and an artist. For all of my life, I have been very tight lipped about this because I was afraid of being seen as a narcissistic and arrogant artist. So I strayed from myself and focused on what was going on around me, family, government and politics, things that I had no direct control over, and used my art as a tool to express my opinions about thoses forces. In 1992, I read “Toward a New Consciousness” by Gloria Anzaldua, which gave me direction in order to emerge as an artist. Because of her writing and the injustices in the strip clubs, I completed my first body of art “My Life as a Comic Stripper.”* This solo show was my “coming out” show in the artworld. I emerged as a fledgling artist and as a result, I ended up in Bay Area Now in 1997. Around 2000, I began to feel a need for some kind of change. But I wouldn’t take the initiative until last year after a trip to Sante Fe, where the Native Americans at the Institute of American Indian Arts, turned me onto a book called “Relations Indigenous Dialogues”. This book is highly intelligent, visionary (something I find greatly lacking in the artworld today, where are the great art critics of color? artists of color/philosophers of color????), and boldy opinionated (something lacking in many young artists today.)

Front Cover of Relations Indigenous Dialogue 2006

While reading the book, I realized that I was an intellectual artist and that I desired to establish myself in the artworld, against the concerns of my fellow artists friends who’s fears were:

“not to suck up and sell out”,”fuck the critics”, “why do you want to move to New York?” and “art is just a job, it’s not a life”…

I didn’t respond to them. But in my mind, I thought to myself, “how can an artist live up to his/her potential with such bad attitudes toward art?” Why are we so willing to sabotage ourselves?

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Back around ‘96 while taking the bus toward downtown LA I came upon a carnival at night. Carnivals have always fascinated me. With the energy and excitement of people coming together to enjoy a fantasy enviroment has always intrique me. I was especially impressed with the high contrast of moving color lights against the night sky that the rides would produce. At the same time we were having problems with the ongoing gang situation. An emotionally charge enviroment in its own right. And its this emotional charge which I was trying to capture in this piece. Also, I was reading ‘Terra Nuestra’ by Carlos Fuentes and came upon this passage in the text:
‘Did we come to laugh or cry? Are we dying or being born? Is it the beginning or the end, cause or solution? What are we living through?’
Ontological questions are always good to counter an emotional unbalance.
And so I included this in the overall image. The title: ‘Carnal-val is a play on the word Carnival. ‘Carnales’ in mexican slang means brotherhood. I eventually sold the piece to a collector in Phoenix who in turn submited it to a traveling exhibition on Chicano artists. Unfortunately, at the end of the show it was one of 7 pieces that were stolen. The piece has never been recover!
-Rene Angulo Trujillo, ‘OtrO’ Angulo

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