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webmaster 15-09-2011

GabrielMendoza’s Series on Children Prostitution

Elvira Rilova

Mexican artist Gabriel Mendoza carried out a project with underprivileged children some months ago. What began as a mere game of innocent artistic expression turned into brutal revelation, as he learned that many of those kids, born from prostitutes, express through their drawings the rawness of their daily life, which they quite naturally express. A situation that shouldn’t be withstood by these children but they shed light on it, with the unvarnished vision caused by custom and without any trace of innocence.

Mendoza, deeply impressed, decided then to create a series of drawings inspired on prostitution from the viewpoint of a child. It won’t be the vision, so recurrent on art history, of prostitutes as desire object, as accomplices to alcoholic parties; it doesn’t try, at least voluntarily, to point a finger at the profession. It just wants to offer the clear and unconscious approach that sets the habit of a life, not marked from the beginning of prostitution, but also by mistreatment, neglect and drugs, in many cases. An existence with harsh starting point and uncertain future.

Zaragoza-Galeana series (reference to the streets where prostitution is practiced) is made up of a series of drawing on shinny acrylics and inks, with deliberately children naif stroke, on an apparently simple aesthetic tessitura, that contains the instinct of overwhelming reality.

The evolution of this series brings about, as the artist continues his research, the display of plain events caused by the realities Mendoza discovered. The testimonies of prostitutes’ children turn into experiences of those children who also practice the prostitution. Knowing young people from rural areas of the country, who run away from mistreatment and poverty, and fall into complicated situations which inevitably push them to live in the streets, sell their bodies as only means of support, and the result is the unavoidable fall into the nebulous world of drugs. Mendoza’s new main character, his first person vision, the eyes of pain, resignation, all turn into the committed artist’s most explicit denunciation.

“El Carrusel” stands out on the paintings, baptized with names of streets where girls sell their bodies (Jesus Maria and Santo Tomas in Mexico DF, Zaragoza, Galeana in Oaxaca, where the artist lives), a revolving platform where teenagers were showcased and Mendoza was deeply impressed. The most terrible dehumanization of individuals, embarrassment and public exhibition: that’s what Mendoza shows with strong strokes, vivid colors and remarkable expressive power, always from children points of view, eyes that have witnessed horrorsbut still ooze hope.