Hyperallergic Covers Yvette Mayorga’s Deliciously Daunting Solo Show

A recent profile in Hyperallergic highlights School of the Art Institute Chicago alum Yvette Mayorga (MFA 2016) solo exhibition, Dreaming of You, at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut. This show consists of 16 of Mayorga’s multimedia pieces that blur the boundaries between painting and sculpture. Mayorga reinterprets canonical art historical paintings by creating fantastical, bubblegum-pink scenes centered around her family and her experience growing up a child of Mexican immigrants.

By trading a paint brush for a piping bag, Mayorga pays tribute to her mother’s time working at a bakery by applying acrylic paint to her canvases like thick frosting on an ornate cake. Her style consists of a combination of French Rococo-era decoration and Y2K ephemera. Mayorga’s delicious paintings evoke a sense of fun and play, but if the viewer looks closer at the scene, they will notice the threat of ICE and other anti-immigration imagery invading the space. Her largest piece is F* is for ICE 1975-2018 (After Portrait of Innocent X, c. 1650, Diego Velázquez), a self-portrait of her and her grandfather sitting in a throne room filled with juxtaposing images of delicious treats and real threats to immigrants. Dreaming of You comments on the grim realities of pursuing the American Dream through delectable dreamscapes.