Yolanda Lopez "Mexican Chair" (1986)

Chicana artist and feminist, Yolanda Lopez, constructed a mixed media piece titled “Mexican Chair” in 1986.

Yolanda M. Lopez Mexican Chair (1986)

The chair has an image of the famous sleeping mexican, resting against the cactus, and the seat of the chair is made to emulate a cactus with sharp thorns - making the seat cushion unusable. The piece was part of the installation Things I Never Told My Son about Being Mexican (1985). Although not very discussed, Mexican Chair resonated with me the most. Being a Mexican American woman, I have connected with cactus before white American- yoga hippies thought it was just a trendy look. Cactuses are the sole plant I have been able to connect myself outside of my urban environment. Personally the cactus is a symbol for hardship, beauty, resources, and members of my native and indigenous communities. The skin of the cactus as depicted on Lopez’s chair, shows a lack of opportunity for rest. The sleeping image of the Mexican is a harsh stereotype that Mexicans are lazy. The two areas of the chair contrast each other. However, by titling the piece “Mexican Chair” I found it a playful and clever way to illustrate the chair is in fact Mexican, however, no rest will be taken on it- not for the Mexican and not for those watching. 

I too am a cactus-making artist that has social-political work on the Mexican stereotype. In a current exhibition titled Migration at UCLA’s New White Gallery, I fabricated Opuntia.

Carisse Zepeda, Opuntia (2020)

Opuntia is a ten foot tall cactus with a cactus alter where individuals can pick up an ipad, raise it to a monarch butterfly, and through augmented reality users can see the faces of those who have grown alongside the cactus on its native land. I instantly gravitated to Lopez’s Chicana work, because I too share a sense of what it means to be stereotyped with the desert plant.