Michael Menchaca
Imperial Construction
Screen Print
30 x 22 inches
Published by Brandywine Workshop and Archives, Philadelphia.
Michael Menchaca’s Imperial Construction is part of a narrative that the artist has created to tell the story of immigration along the US-Mexico Border. In Menchaca’s story, they say that a group of “cat characters have been dismembered and made an example of…they’ve been turned into this imperial construction by these tyrannous rats.” Menchaca’s work often uses their cast of fictional characters and modern-day mythology to represent contemporary political issues, like immigration and border control. The cat characters, Menchaca has explained, arose from the neighborhood cats that their mother cared for, and their fear that the cats would become dependent on their family for survival: a worry that mirrors anti-immigration sentiment. “I realized this could be a way to talk about immigration policies, human rights issues, and my cultural heritage through this cartoon image. So, I continue to associate different cultures, different people’s histories, with different animal archetypes in the tradition of the Mixtec codices.”
—Adapted fromhttps://serieproject.org/product/michael-menchaca/, accessed 8-4-2022
