Giving Away Mexican Food

In this presentation, I examine a Mexican food drawing series and performance. Using watercolor and pencil, I make Mexican food drawings on vintage book pages. These old books become my sketchbooks as I draw my favorite foods on each page: tacos, caldos (soups), enchiladas, burritos, anything with chile, frutas, and more. I make these drawings because Mexican food is the only Mexican cultural constant in my life. As a Chicano growing up in Stockton, California, I grew up with fragmented identities between the US and Mexico- ni de aquí, ni de allá (from neither here nor there). Criticized for not being Mexican enough, this food is synonymous with my identity. I use these food drawings as acts to validate who I am. Often, I misspell word/labels on my drawings, for example, enchilada as enchalada. These misspelled images are awkward like my fractured sense of self. Once completing a drawing on each page, I give these drawings away to visitors at museums and galleries include The Cheech, Nevada Museum of Art, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Tamaulipas (MACT), and Boston University’s Center on Forced Displacement.