Luis Valderas

Contact Info: MASA

I wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid.  I remember watching men land on the moon in ’69 and wanting to explore unknown worlds on my own Apollo Mission.  Because of a hearing loss that was not discovered until the 6th grade, it was easy for me to retreat into my imagination and draw pictures of rockets, planets and strange animals. Although I never made it into space, my mission on earth has always been to make art.

      Born in 1966, I have lived most of my life in McAllen, Texas (en la Frontera del Valle del Rio Grande). But my roots to this region go back to 1914 when my father and his family escaped from one of the many revolutions in Mexico to the U.S.  My father experienced the evolution of El Valle from muddy streets with hitching posts to crowded avenues with a shortage of parking spaces and too much concrete. His attitude and experiences, particularly his cuentos, have taught me the value of making the best of things. He taught me to adapt, a necessary trait for bicultural survival. I also remember watching my mother paint figurines for her ceramic/flower shop.  Eventually, my brothers and I helped her prepare and paint clay figurines that she sold to local department stores for birthdays and graduations; we also helped her arrange straw and silk-flowered wreaths for Mother’s and Father’s Day and Dia de los Muertos.

      From the multi-colored storefronts to the turquoise-colored housing projects, the clash of colorful imagery that is neither Mexico nor the U.S., surrounded and influenced my young eyes, but it was not until I was older that I began to see the juxtaposition of festivity and misery.  While crossing the border I recognized the poor and the homeless— women, children and invalids with outstretched hands and styrofoam cups on the sidewalks and the puente in Reynosa. 

These images cannot, however, be separated from the lively bustle of the mercado, a place of both hope and desperation, a place where colors, smells, and sounds meet in a dance of misery and joy en la frontera.  Although my family was better off than those on the bridges, I did grow up in La Paloma, a barrio composed mainly of three-room frame houses and hand-to-mouth subsistence. I was close to, yet very far away from the poverty and suffering that I saw.

The interest in my heritage (from Meso-American relics and masks to my father’s cuentos) has led me to the mythological iconography of other cultures, much like the way man first wondered about the stars. As I explore and link these icons, I try to recreate their essence— to give form to the fears, dreams, and desires that they represent.  For example, the imagery of rockets and calaveras is my attempt to reconcile my fears, hopes, and dreams about the future, a future that will be determined by the conscious and unconscious actions of both the past and present. I create to see the world more clearly, to gain insight via hindsight.  In short, my work is a celebration of life that also questions and criticizes our universal indifference to the co-existence of so many things...

Artist's Statement

The conflict between the real world (conscious thought) and the unreal world (unconscious thought) is both universal and timeless. It is a theme that can be found in modern popular culture as well as ancient mythology, a theme that has inspired me as an artist.

     The image of maquiladoras resting on top of the Quetzacoatl’s head, for example, is an attempt to reconcile my own fears, hopes, and dreams about the future, a future that will be determined by the conscious and unconscious actions of both the past and present.

     The exploration and linking of mythological iconography through time and space is, for me, a means to insight via hindsight, a way of removing the aforementioned ‘mind splinter’. In other words, I create order to see the world more clearly.

     Although we are unique individuals with the ability to choose our perspectives, I also believe in the idea of a collective unconscious. This state, while typically activated at night in dreams, can also be realized in the conscious creation and viewing of everyday images.

The White Rocket Tezcatlipoca

    In the Meso-American mythos, Los Tezcatlipoca stand at each cardinal point supporting the cosmic corners of the universe. To the Aztecs they represented manifestation of the dual creative force in the universe. Each one was clad in the color symbolic of the cardinal direction in their charge; red to the east, yellow to the south, black to the west, and white to the north. The White Tezcatlipoca stood in the cold, barren lands to the north, a frigid, desolate area of much suffering. In the modern world Mexican-Americans have searched for their dream towards "El Norte"; a land of much tribulation and suffering that holds the hopes and dreams of a better future for them and their families.

    The abuses Mexican-Americans have endured for these dreams of a better future are well documented but quietly ignored by mainstream America. From the building of the American railroad system in the early 1800's to the modern day construction site of the mass-produced American Dream Home, the Mexican-American has labored and built the foundation and infrastructure of El Norte. The mass "repatriation" of thousands of Mexican-Americans during the Great Depression and the peak of abuse during the Zoot Suit Riots in L.A. of the 40's did not stop them, however, from being the raza most decorated with honors during WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. The Brazerro, the migrant, and the undocumented worker have kept the agricultural basket of this country supplied with cheap labor, while they continue to search for the same dreams in El Norte.

    The White Rocket Tezcatlipoca towers over a land that has received the blood, sweat and tears of the Chicano family-old and new; a land that is a contradiction of itself with the promise of liberty for all at the cost set by global corporations. It looks over an empire where people are spoon-fed propaganda by the media puppets while the politics of oil dynasties give the choice of only bad or worse. It witnesses the double speak and Orwellian prophecies as the voice from the loudspeaker increases the terror warning level to condition orange. The White Rocket Tezcatlipoca grins coldly over all this affliction of spirit and body as he holds up his cosmic corner, offering hope. It is in this land where Chicanas and Chicanos dig deep into the ground and reach up to the stars just like their ancestors have done before.

 ~Luis Valderas