While many of Sierra\u2019s works are very large, the gallery arrangement provides the viewer some breathing room with the presentation of his smaller, more abstract works such as Magnified Particle #1<\/em> and Magnified Particle #2<\/em> among his more representational pieces. His demonstration piece, Slow Collisions<\/em>, is the largest in the room and takes immediate visual precedence upon entrance. As the gallery is traversed, one of his video pieces plays in the back corner, creating an auditory background of his poetry as the viewer experiences his visual work.<\/p>\n\n\n Sierra\u2019s pattern and decoration pays homage to Mayan art, often utilizing collections of small colorful lines and shapes to form a larger subject or composition. His colors are a similar case, bringing to mind both Mayan and Mexican history. Sierra\u2019s white snakes are used in both The Revolution of Inheritance <\/em>and Sisters of Common Threads<\/em>, both dead. The snake in the former is divided into five pieces, crosses present in the cross-sections of its body alluding to the snake\u2019s biblical association with the devil. The rest of the piece\u2019s content aligns with this association with its depiction of church-like architecture alongside a woman and child posed not unlike many well-known images of Mary and infant Jesus. The greater significance in this piece is that the woman and her child appear to be of Hispanic descent \u2013 a subversion of the usual, white-dominated narrative. The snake\u2019s color and state then become a representation of the death of that narrative as well \u2013 in both pieces the white colonizer is killed, and in the former it is revealed that Christianity is at its core.<\/p>\n\n\n Chico Sierra\u2019s depiction of femininity is another noteworthy trait of the show, with nearly all of the present works featuring women. Rather than presenting them in any manner of objectification or appropriation, however, Sierra renders them each with a halo behind their heads, lifting them up to a status of holiness and respect. Also among the show\u2019s motifs is plant life, leaves being present in the linework filling the spaces of his canvases and numerous cacti depicted in many of his pieces. The cacti in particular serve as another nod to Mexico, but in the context of the show\u2019s themes their resilience can be interpreted as a reference to the perseverance of cultural identity in the face of colonialism. It\u2019s these associations that make Sierra\u2019s work impactful and encourage the show\u2019s viewer to take a deeper look into the real-world issues he incorporates into his pieces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [1]<\/a> \u201cChico Sierra,\u201d CHICO SIERRA<\/a>, Accessed March 13, 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [2]<\/a> Judith Fertig, \u201cArtist Chico Sierra Answers Four Questions<\/a>,\u201d IN Kansas City Magazine<\/em>, March 29, 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Lori Bowen Chico Sierra\u2019s \u201cThe Good Sun\u201d is set up at the Dedo Maranville gallery from February 13th to April 4th and features a wide selection of Sierra\u2019s works. The show opened alongside a workshop from Sierra himself in which he painted the exhibition\u2019s largest piece for an audience of students and other onlookers. … Continue reading \u201cThe Good Sun\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":411,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[231],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chicosierra"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/artcriticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/artcriticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/artcriticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/artcriticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/411"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/artcriticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2081"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/artcriticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2082,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/artcriticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081\/revisions\/2082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/artcriticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/artcriticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/artcriticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/artcriticism\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/101\/2025\/05\/Picture1.jpg\")
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