ABSTRACT
This chapter considers several artworks by contemporary artist Julio Galán (1958—2006) painted in the 1980s and 90s where he examines identity through self-portraiture posing as the Mexican type, whether china poblana, charro, Tehuana, or lotería icon, as a way of challenging and redefining notions of mexicanidad (Mexicanness). Born into a well-established ranching and mining family in the small town of Múzquiz, Coahuila, and sent from an early age to industrial Monterrey, Nuevo León, the self-taught artist sought to advance his career in New York City in the mid-1980s, achieving international recognition. How did Galán bridge regionalism and internationalism, and to what purpose? While cosmopolitan, living part-time between Monterrey, New York City, and Paris, the artist at times exploited the regional type in his art as post-modern strategy; such artworks both participated in the artistic current known as Neo-Mexicanism, and presented highly transgressive imagery. An eclectic and complex artist, Galán rebelled against the strictures of categorization, consistently playing with gender, and advocating for the fluidity of sexual and cultural identity. In this chapter I argue that Galán created a border aesthetic by infusing his work with impurity, hybridity, camp, and cliché, playfully ridiculing fixed ideas of mexicanidad by both appropriating its signs, and showcasing the transcultural.
