Visual arts
‘La Quebradora’: New exhibition delves into Mexican-style wrestling that transcends classes, generations
“La Quebradora” at Mission Cultural Center, S.F.; Calendar
The new exhibition at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts is titled “La Quebradora.” Aficionados of lucha libre will be familiar with the term — it’s the wrestling hold that roughly translates to “the backbreaker” and involves dropping an opponent onto one’s knee. It’s a colorful and visceral expression that suffuses the entire show, which features sculpture, painting, drawing, murals and video installations by 12 artists.
Curator Amy Pederson describes lucha libre as a pastime that “all Mexicans can and do enjoy. At its origins in the 1930s, lucha libre coincided with similar efflorescences in cinema, dance and music in Latin America.”
Pederson explains that the cultural significance of lucha libre cannot be underestimated, as it was the only contemporaneous form of popular culture to transcend social classes and generations on a regional and national level, while escaping institutionalization and assimilation.
“It’s something that must be directly experienced,” she says. “TV and film representations of lucha libre are pale copies at best.”
The assembled artists, who hail from Mexico (except for Nina Hoechtl, who is from Austria), share Pederson’s love for lucha libre, which is as much performance art and ritual theater as it is sport, given the pomp and pageantry that trail the luchador, who is exalted to near superhero status.
The idea for the show emerged from Pederson’s interest in lucha libre and longstanding professional connection with artist Juan Bastardo, whose wrestling-based work she had curated in 2008 as part of the MexiCali Biennial.
Highlights of the show include the evocative oil on canvas painting by Enrique Hernandez titled “Santo vs. Santo” (2005), featuring the famous luchador who was simultaneously sports figure, folk hero and popular culture icon. “Mascara” (2012) by Ruben Gutierrez features a grittier, darkly comical metaphor for the sport and is a photograph of a stenciled luchador mask made entirely of cocaine.
“There are quite a few different takes on the subject,” Pederson says. For instance, artists such as Joaquin Segura and Artemio tackle issues of physical combat to examine issues of widespread political violence, while Bastardo has “a more spiritual take on wrestling, with ideas of the physical body merging with more transcendental issues like redemption and salvation.”
Formalist approaches can also be found in the show, including Antonio Monroy’s projected image of the choreography of a wrestling match, which represents each opponent in a different color. “The size of the circles indicates the force of the wrestler’s movement,” Pederson says.
Austria’s Nina Hoechtl lives and works in Mexico City and “interestingly, her work is the most engaged with ideas of a Mexican cultural identity,” Pederson says. Hoechtl created a masked character based on the Penacho de Moctezuma, a feather-work crown that is in Vienna and is the subject of Mexican repatriation attempts.
Hoechtl’s “intervention” included an actual wrestling performance in Mexico City.
Themes that have consistently emerged in the show include concepts of masquerade, the double, identity and spectacle, and religious and political salvation. The luchador symbolizes “the location of the mark of truth and freedom within art,” Pederson says, “and the potentiality of a genuine and revolutionary form of popular culture.”