“One of the essential things that is the point that I’m at right now, not only as an artist, but in my career, is a notion of revaluing or understanding or reconsidering what value is. So that I can also create a space for assessment.”
Artists and Rights, Episode 5: The Brown Ceiling and Possible Futures
Artists and Rights, Episode 6: Behind the Closed Door: Intimacy, Collaboration, and Access
Mario Ybarra, Jr. creates sculptures, installations, photographs, and activist interventions as a means of examining various components of Mexican-American identity. His aesthetic often combines street culture iconography with historical and political imagery, such as in Brown and Proud (2006), which depicts Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata in a large-scale work that merges graffiti art with a style recalling the work of muralist Diego Rivera. Ybarra also draws from quintessentially American imagery and popular culture, such as in Scarface Museum(2007), which features paraphernalia from the famous 1983 film Scarface (about a drug cartel kingpin during the 1980s cocaine boom) displayed in a glass vitrine as a memorial to one of the artist’s late friends. American, b. 1973, Los Angeles, California, based in Los Angeles, California.
You can also find Mario Ybarra, Jr. here:
The Huntington Library hosted Mario Ybarra, Jr. for their /five initiative in 2018.
The artist talks about his Slanguage studio at the Creative Time Summit: Art, Place, and Dislocation in the 21st Century
A video profile of the artist produced by the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara.
Selected Work
Mario Ybarra, Jr., Invisible Man, 2012. Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 48 inches. Courtesy Honor Fraser Gallery. Photo credit: Josh White.
Mario Ybarra, Jr., Like a Cow Visiting a Butcher Shop, 2013. Mixed media, dimensions variable. Installation View, Image is Slanguage, ARCO Fair, Madrid, Spain, February 13-17, 2013. Photo credit: Slanguage.
Mario Ybarra, Jr., Slanguage Window Project, 2001. Curatorial window displays, mixed media, dimensions variable. Installation view, G.O.C.A (Gallery of Contemporary Art by Ed Gomez).
Mario Ybarra, Jr., Slanguage Studio, 2009. Photo made into billboard, vinyl, dimensions variable. Photo credit: Slanguage.