The three things artists have always dealt with are portraiture, landscape and self-portraiture, Mario Ybarra Jr. said at a Visiting Artist Lecture Series talk at UO on Thursday. The visual and performing artist incorporates these aspects in his work in a nontraditional way.
“For all I know he had my friend killed” also known as “The Scarface Museum” is an installment dedicated to Ybarra Jr.’s friend Angel. Instead of family photographs hung around the house, Angel had Scarface memorabilia. Back in the early 2000s, Ybarra Jr. was driving past Angel’s house when he saw the FBI raid it and arrest Angel. Angel was arrested and imprisoned in connection to drug offenses. The next day, Angel’s wife had thrown out all the Scarface stuff.
Ybarra Jr. took all of the old memorabilia and created art. He communicated with Angel in prison and asked why it was so important to him, and he said it was because Scarface had been his only Latino hero.
“I was questioning why it is that the only Latino representation that we have within media is negative stereotypes,” Ybarra Jr. said.
For Ybarra Jr., “The Scarface Museum” is a portrait of his friend Angel. The typical definition of a portrait is a picture of a person. “The Scarface Museum” has no pictures of Angel but it is still a portrait for Ybarra Jr. because it helps represent a part of his character.
Ybarra Jr. grew up in Los Angeles, California in the 70s and 80s. He attended Otis College of Art and Design and then UC Irvine. In 2001 he received his MFA, or as he calls it, his “Mother Fucking Artist degree.” Ybarra Jr. is a storyteller — he used hand gestures, props and different inflections in his voice during his presentation to tell the story of his life and his work. He combines street art and contemporary art in his practice, drawing inspiration from his own experiences.
“My practice is very personal,” Ybarra Jr. said. “My work is about creating space and occupying space. But also very much delves into a space of narrative.”
Ybarra told his audience about why his Abuela (grandma) Soledad immigrated from Mexico. He thought it was for “a better life” when in reality, she said it was “for revenge.” She moved to the U.S. to spite her ex-boyfriend who did not visit her when he returned from military duty. For Ybarra Jr., his family stories are an essential inspiration for his work. He described himself as one of the family storytellers, along with his father and Abuela Soledad.
The installation “Universal Monsters” is an example of self-portraiture in Ybarra Jr.’s work. It is a collection of interpretations of famous monsters. “Invisible Man,” included in the “Universal Monsters” series, was created in his studio as Ybarra Jr. put on a ski mask he saw on the counter, one of his favorite hats and his glasses. And then, “boom. Invisible man.” He used this inspiration to created a digital representation of himself as Insvisible Man.
The piece is an ode to his mom and her creativity from one memorable Halloween of his youth. Ybarra Jr. was in elementary school and forgot to ask his mother for a costume until the day of Halloween. She sent him scrambling around the house for a coat, ace bandages, her sunglasses and a pair of gloves. “You’re the invisible man,” Ybarra remembers his mom saying.
“I’m invisible motherfuckers,” Ybarra Jr. screamed in joy. “This piece is kind of like an ode to my mom, making me invisible.”
Once art historians saw this piece, they interpreted it in relation to identity politics and the experience of a Latino man in America. While that may not have been Ybarra Jr.’s original intent, he said he is fine with it because “art has multiple meanings.”
Leaving the aspiring artists at the event with a piece of advice, Ybarra Jr. talked about the need to accept your own habits. He held up a carved wooden box that he got from a thrift store the other day. He had plenty of boxes and did not know why he had such a strong urge to take it. A few days later, he found gold paper in his “hoarder corner” that he had saved from a box of chocolates. He then realized that he got the box to line the inside with the gold paper he had been saving.
Ybarra Jr. advised the UO artists to “not suppress the urge, even though you don’t know what the answer is at the end of the day.”
