Changarrito with Michael Menchaca

About the Artist

Michael Menchaca (they/them) is an interdisciplinary Queer Xicanx / non-binary artist using print media and new media formats to generate anti-colonial, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist visions of the world. As a Mexican American born and raised in San Antonio, TX—a community with colonial roots in military and civil policing practices—Menchaca registers the perspective of a caste oppressed polity struggling to break free from historical patterns of cruelty by neo-colonial ascendancy. Like many Tejanxs, they are constantly mediating the internalized racist, ableist, and gendered myths embedded in them by the legacy of global white supremacy in the Americas. Menchaca regards their art production as an ongoing practice of decolonial resistance and as a repudiation of the industrial violence work contributing to the destruction of sustainable life on madre tierra.

They have developed a personalized lexicon of animal archetypes and narrative pattern designs to assist in mythologizing the interwoven histories of European colonization, U.S. slavery/mass incarceration, and the mass acculturation and domestication of A.I. assisted technologies that “optimize” and “amplify” 21st century settler-colonial capacities of racial and social control. Their vector-based imagery blends the framework of ancient Mesoamerican Codices, European Bestiaries, and Japanese Video Games with the seductive, attention-seeking interfaces of Big Data Technologies. Recent work addresses the ways in which government agencies and U.S. Tech companies have co-constructed a digital caste system, or A Cage Without Borders, in what can be defined as the current age of “The New Jim Code.”* Menchaca creates multimedia installations that apply a combination of printmaking, painting, and digital animation, exploring Latinx/Latine identities in a hyper-mediated American landscape.

Changarrito Cart August 18 – 19 & September 15 – 22

Artists have the opportunity to sell their art on the Changarrito cart in front of the Museum (or an offsite location, as representative for the Museum during various Austin festivals). Changarreando expands the reach of the artist by presenting their gallery online, while allowing the option to sell merch over Instagram and receive 100% of the sale.

Michael Menchaca featured their artwork on the Changarrito cart right outside the Museum’s entrance on August 18 – 19 & September 15 – 22, 2012.