Nicolás De Jesús: A Mexican Artist for Global Justice

Tlin Neshtlaawilohua nechijlia:Kenoon patlaaniz in tlapaltlatoojli, kan kiteemachistiizquia ken ikzan tlayowiilo. Iwan teshyolkukua ika shtikmatin kamanoon tlamiz in tlayoowiliztli? (My challenge is the following: how to translate through art the situation of uncertainty, pain, and desperation of the people?)

These are the words of Nicolás de Jesús, a contemporary artist from the state of Guerrero, Mexico, whose art and life have always been driven by a commitment to social justice. Attested by his most recent large-scale paintings, all from 2020–21 and exhibited here for the first time in the United States, De Jesus’s social commitment surpasses the boundaries of his native Mexico. While his work emerges from Mexican artistic traditions, it is coupled with his global experience in places like Paris, Jakarta, and Chicago, where he lived for nearly five years. His art is both an ode to life and a fight for human rights. Since the early 1990s, De Jesús has been internationally recognized for his several hundred etchings on amate (traditional bark paper) filled with satirical skeletons or featuring joyful rural scenes inhabited by the living. His social activism has also led him to paint, with the support of community members, dozens of mural paintings and street banners that were used during public demonstrations in Mexico and abroad.

Covering three decades of artistic creation, Nicolás De Jesús: A Mexican Artist for Global Justice is the most complete retrospective to date dedicated to De Jesús, and is structured in seven thematic sections, including: The Chicago Series; Large-Scale American Paintings; Pueblo; Humor; Día de los Muertos; Repression and Environmental Crisis; and Banners and Murals.