Guillermo Gomez Pena 1

El Chinaco

At 5 years of age, the subject is dressed as “a 19th century Chinaco”1 by his mother. The occasion was a civic event at his Mexico City school intended to boost the pride of the kids’ “mestizo” roots. He regards this moment as his “first performance art ever.

El Vaquero Poblano

At 18-years of age, the subject poses as an American cowboy to impress his girlfriend “Lula” in the zocalo of Puebla City. The unidentified street photographer used to stage this type of image for a living.

Los Dos Mister Misterios

During his days in a US art school named Cal Arts, the subject and another Mexican national named Leonides Guadarrama spent a week walking around campus posing as “los dos Mister Misterios.” Circa 1979, Mr. Misterio was one of the subject’s “early performance personas.” He wrote about this action: “We were commenting on the process of unfolding of identities generated by our recent migration to the US.”

El Border Brujo

One of the many looks of Border Brujo (circa 1988). At the time, the subject constantly morphed into various identities including a “merolico”3, a charlatan healer, a Tijuana tourist guide, a bi-national activist, and a performance monologist. He traveled to many illegal alien communities and “Chicano barrios”4 under the Border Brujo alias.

Los Narco-mafiosos

In the early 90’s, the subject and his accomplice Roberto Sifuentes used to impersonate stylized images of Mexican Mafiosi and called it “conceptual art.” In this photograph, the duo is trying to persuade the director of New York City’s MOMA to buy a velvet painting of a mulatta Marilyn Monroe.