Museum of Latin American Art Extra Credit Paper: Gabriel De La Mora

Gabriel de la Mora was born in Colima, Mexico in 1968. The forty three year old artist has dominated the contemporary art production in Mexico. De la Mora completed his BA in Architecture from Universidad Anahuac del Norte, Mexico City. He also has a MFA with honours in Photography and Video from Pratt Institute in New York. A couple years after he finished his MFA, he started his work residency at Ecole Regionale des Beaux-Arts Saint-Etienne, France.
Since the start of his career as an artist, he has created numerous dynamic and intellectual pieces. His work thrived and caught a lot of media attention in both Mexico and the United States. Within these pieces, he has recently sought a recognizable formal vocabulary and an artistic voice of his own. After close to a decade of defining himself as an artist, many believes that he has found his identity in the Art world.
The digital video, “39-G.M.C.-23.sept.2007”, the conceptual artist breaks a piñata made of cardboard that is an exact duplication of his body. He strikes at this alter ego like a child at a Mexican birthday party, but as the colourful object falls apart, instead of releasing a cascade of candy treats, it spills painted-cardboard guts and torrents of red-confetti blood. The battle of breaking the piñata of his replication could be interpreted as an act of self-destruction. The artist explained that the destruction of the piñata is an exploration of the concept of the self-portrait as the “construction” of one’s self. The plexiglass box containing the final product of the whole art production contains de la Mora’s “organs” which constitutes the artwork that is created by deconstructing or destroying another (the piñata). Thus, de la Mora believes that creation and destruction are connected in an infinite cycle.
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