A driving vision
New Mexico native Luis Tapia is no stranger to the traditional arts of his home state, having trained as a santero. But he gives his contemporary wood sculptures bitingly humorous twists in controversial works that tackle themes of immigration, issues within the Catholic Church, and problems of ethnic identity. In August, Tapia closed one show at the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, California; he is poised to open another at Chicago’s National Museum of Mexican Art in October. He signs copies of his new monograph Borderless: The Art of Luis Tapia, at the Museum of International Folk Art on Sunday, Sept. 24. On the cover is his 2006 Santa cruz, carved and painted wood, from Borderless, Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, California, photo © Addison Doty, courtesy The Owings Gallery.
Luis Tapia’s La Cieneguilla studio, the sculptor is busily painting a multitude of faces on his latest work. The form is the Statue of Liberty. The faces, which represent people from all different cultures, races, and nations, adorn Liberty’s robes from top to bottom. Her torch is held high but gripped by a skeletal hand. The flame has been extinguished, and smoke is rising in its stead. The word “freedom,” carved in relief, is emblazoned across her bronze pedestal.
“Her face isn’t a skeleton as of yet but the process is happening,” Tapia said. One senses he’s referring not so much to the sculpture he’s painting but the symbol of Liberty herself and what she represents for so many people. Calaveras grace the sculpture’s base. “It’s what this country is built on, right?” he said. “The bones of other people, the bones of our ancestors, so to speak. I put the freedom sign on there and, of course, it’s broken in half.”
Not everything Tapia does lately deals so matter-of-factly with immigration, but it does form an integral part of his work. The Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, California, recently published the monograph The Art of Luis Tapia. Tapia’s solo exhibition Luis Tapia: Cada mente es un mundo (the title means “Each Mind is a World”) was on view at MoLAA this summer, ending in late August. includes essays from writer and activist Lucy Lippard, MoLAA curator Edward Hayes, director of the art museum at the National Hispanic Cultural Center Tey Marianna Nunn, and others. The book was edited by Tapia’s wife, journalist and author Carmella Padilla.
The artwork from the recent exhibit has returned to Santa Fe but sits packaged in Tapia’s studio, ready to be shipped to Chicago’s National Museum of Mexican Art for the exhibition
which opens on Oct. 27. Tapia signs copies of during the Museum of International Folk Art’s upcoming Museum Hill Community Day events on Sunday, Sept. 24. The Liberty sculpture is intended for the show in Chicago. “It’s been something I’ve had in my mind for a while and it’s pre-Trump, to be honest with you,” Tapia said of the piece. “But of course, what’s going on today fired it up again in my head.”
Tapia was not just referencing the ongoing debate about the future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, an Obama-era policy that provides legal protections for approximately 800,000 immigrants who arrived in the United States as children, but also other issues affecting communities across the nation, such as Trump’s proposed border wall, which would directly impact undocumented workers and their families seeking to cross the border with Mexico.
At Tapia’s home, a short jaunt from the studio by car, more works address the problems of immigration today, while also referencing the roots of New Mexico culture. One piece that stands nearly 4 feet tall depicts a tough looking man, heavily tattooed with religious imagery ( Jesus and the Virgin of Guadalupe), that reference La Raza, and other images of ethnoracial identity. On his upper arm is a tattooed list of words — “Mexican,” “Chicano,” “Latino” — all of them crossed out except for the word “Hispanic,” the last one on the list. “It’s called Tapia said. “This is an older piece. That’s that guy that’s always standing on the corner in your neighborhood and you don’t know if he’s there to protect you or if he’s there to screw you all up. He was going through that period of time when Latinos didn’t know what to call themselves. There’s a lot of confusion here in New Mexico because lot of guys here call themselves Spanish, right? There’s some truth to that, but the Mexican flag flew here for 25 years. Theoretically, during that period of time, we were all Mexican.”
Tapia was 18 months old when his father died. His mother faced hardships raising two boys and trying to find work. “In the ’50s, man, it was a real difficult time for women to try to find jobs and stuff like that, but she did what she could.” Tapia was raised by his grandmother in the village of Agua Fría and attended Salazar Elementary. His grandmother only spoke Spanish, and
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