Catrinas

"Catrinas" is a dark fantasy, surrealist, and gothic mixed media post-art series dated November 2024.

The Catrinas series vibrantly explores the iconic Mexican Catrina as an interstitial force between the human and the nonhuman, blending surrealism, satire, and rich cultural symbolism rooted in Mexican history. The original figure of La Catrina was created by caricaturist José Guadalupe Posada, who used her as a satirical character to critique Mexican society. Later, artist Diego Rivera reimagined her in his mural Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda Central, renaming her La Catrina and cementing her status as a beloved cultural icon.

Each artwork in this series is simply titled Catrina, inviting viewers to connect with this figure not as a single identity but as a timeless, open-ended archetype—a skeletal figure that embodies death universally (an experience that problematizes the notion of 'individual identity') and serves as a critique of societal norms. This repetition encourages exploration of identity as an infinite series of differences, questioning the existence of a 'true' and 'fixed' self, thereby challenging conventional ideas of identity. It emphasizes La Catrina as a collective, multifaceted force that embodies various aspects of mortality and social reflection. Originally created to mock superficiality, class hypocrisy, and societal pretensions, La Catrina’s spirit of satire and social commentary endures through this series.

In Posada's time, Catrinas often appeared alongside calaveras literarias (literary skulls), short satirical verses published in newspapers around Día de los Muertos. These verses mocked the living and the dead alike, reminding readers of the inevitable fate we all share. Today, they are a popular tradition, with people of all kinds using this format to humorously criticize public figures or trends, keeping the spirit of satire alive. Posada himself famously stated, “Death is democratic, for at the end of the day, whether white, brown, rich, or poor, we all end up as skeletons.”

The Catrinas series captures this spirit by reimagining and placing her in surreal, gothic worlds where mundane elements merge with dark fantasy, inviting the viewer to enjoy a sensory experience that goes beyond mere reason and words. Together, these artworks form a journey exploring identity, difference, mortality, human behavior, and cultural memory, transforming La Catrina into multiple 'bodies of sensation' that challenge viewers to feel, question, and connect with the universal cycle of life and death in a uniquely Mexican style.