Mesoamerican Replicas, from Midcentury Mexico City to Chicano Los Angeles

Presenter: Jennifer Josten
204 Frick Fine Arts

Josten will present a draft of an essay for an edited volume on theories of replication in Mexican art and architecture. Her essay focuses on how, in the context of twentieth-century industrialization and urbanization, designers in Mexico City, including Luis Lelo de Larrea and Francisco Borbolla, and in East Los Angeles, including David Botello and Johnny González, proposed monuments and monumental architecture that featured replicas and reinventions of ancient Mesoamerican sculptural forms and motifs. In doing so, these designers asserted identitary continuities that transcended time, regime change, and physical space. 

Image: Luis Lelo de Larrea and Francisco Borbolla, Monumento a la Raza, 1940. Mexico City, Mexico.