Enrique Chagoya

Enrique Chagoya (b. 1953) uses printmaking, drawing, painting and book formats to examine cultural conflict, colonialism, immigration and political power through humor and satire. Born in Mexico City, Chagoya earned a degree in economics from the National Autonomous University of Mexico before moving to the United States, where he later received an M.F.A. from the University of California, Berkeley. Chagoya appropriates and remixes imagery from sources ranging from pre-Columbian codices and European art history to comic books, popular culture and contemporary politics. His reinterpretations of Francisco Goya, including works based on Los Caprichos and The Disasters of War, replace historical figures with politicians and pop culture icons, connecting past abuses of power to the present. His accordion-fold books similarly evoke Indigenous Mesoamerican codices while deliberately disrupting conventional narratives of history. By collapsing different cultures and eras into a single visual field, Chagoya challenges ideas of cultural authority and historical truth. He is a professor emeritus at Stanford University.