Blanka Amezkua - Pink Reina

For the last ten years, my body of work has been influenced and informed greatly by popular and traditional Mexican culture, primarily through the appropriations of female imagery from Mexican recycled adult comic books. I have been recontextualizing these images by modifying their initial intention through the use of identified domestic techniques such as embroidery and crochet, in recent work through the application of nail polish and enamels. I am interested in the comic’s reductive representation of women’s bodies and identities. In my recent work, I explore and reveal the codes and language of these comic books by using invasive techniques and materials to isolate the images and separate the text from its’ original context, creating intensely disembodied figures and a cacophony of dialogue. This work celebrates the vernacular language and slang of pulp fiction and popular culture prevalent in Mexico as well as demolish the customary sexist clichés and stereotypes in a transgressive act of reclamation. My work and projects have been shown in the United States, Mexico and Greece at MoMA-P.S.1, Exit Art, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, El Museo del Barrio, Queens Museum of Art, Towson University, Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts in San Francisco, Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana (MACLA), Casa John Spencer, and The Taller Boricua, among others. In 2008 I initiated an artist-run project in my bedroom called Bronx Blue Bedroom Project (BBBP). BBBP’s documentation was showcased in two recent art shows this year in New York City. The first show was Greater New York: 5 Year Review at MoMA-PS 1 and Alternative Histories at Exit Art. In the summer of 2010 I began 3///3 ...three walls on wednesdays... as an open invitation for artists from any point of the globe to exhibit their work on three mobile walls that I carry and place in public spaces. 3///3 is currently moving throughout the city of Athens. Mentions of my work are included in the New York Times, TimeOut, Daily News, Art21:blog, Queens Chronicle, International Museum of Women, WNYC, as well as other publications. I currently live and work between Athens/Greece, Cuernavaca/Mexico, and New York City.