Label Type
Cultural/Historical ContextLabel
Nicolás de Jesús hails from Ameyaltepec, a small village in La Mezcala, a Nahuatl region in the Mexican state of Guerrero. De Jesús arrived in Chicago in the late 1980s, where he applied his training in painting and etching on traditional amate paper — an ancient paper made of the bark of wild fig, nettle, and mulberry trees — to create lively depictions of the city’s urban life. A founding member of the still active Taller Mexicano de Grabado (The Mexican Printmaking Workshop), de Jesús often employs Día de Muertos imagery whose traditional calaveras, or skulls, also evoke the tradition of calaveras literarias, a satirical literary form that poked fun at the hubris of politicians and other public figures, reminding them of their mortality. By using traditional materials and imagery in such a way as to elevate them to the status of fine art, de Jesús challenges aesthetic hierarchies and notions of cultural superiority.