An homage to the black velveteen paintings that hang in many Chicano households, on display at Frye Art Museum through Sept. 23. PHOTO BY TARA J GRAVES
Long before Europeans set foot in the Americas, the jaguar occupied an exalted place in the indigenous religions of Mexico. Associated with the gateway to the underworld, the jaguar embodies, as the poet Francisco X. Alarcón wrote, the “wild untamed living spirit” of the jungle.
On the surface, Juventino Aranda’s We Shall Meet in the Place Where There Is No Darkness (Jaguar) is an oversized homage to the black velveteen paintings that hang in many Chicano households. But to gaze into its yellow eyes is to encounter this untamed spirit as if in an obsidian mirror—transformed, but not defeated, by the homogenizing glaze of industrial capitalism.