Enrique Chagoya, Encounter at the Border of Language. Image courtesy of the artist.
Logan Lecture: Enrique Chagoya
Enrique Chagoya’s prints, drawings, paintings, and codices in the tradition of satirical cartoons have brought him international recognition. Chagoya skillfully combines contrasting images sourced from secular and religious iconographies and popular culture to address colonialism, inequality, and international conflicts with biting humor. Using familiar pop icons such as Superman and Mickey Mouse, he creates deceptively friendly points of entry for a discussion of US hegemony and colonialism.
Chagoya began making political cartoons in the 1970s for union and student newspapers while studying economics at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México in Mexico City. He later directed rural development projects in the city of Veracruz, an experience that ignited his burgeoning interest in transnational politics that would eventually become the subject of his art. Chagoya employs a process which he calls “reverse anthropology,” depicting contemporary events on Amate, a type of paper used in traditional Central American bookmaking, folded like an accordion and read from right to left. His subjects range from revisionist histories of British and Spanish settlement in the Americas to challenging racial stereotypes.
This event is part of the 2025-26 Logan Lecture Series.
Enrique Chagoya, Codex City of Mirrors. Image courtesy of the artist.
Enrique Chagoya, Codex Ytrebil. Image courtesy of the artist.
Enrique Chagoya, Encounter at the Border of Language. Image courtesy of the artist.
Artist Bio
Born in 1953 in Mexico City, Mexico, Enrique Chagoya earned his BFA in printmaking in 1984 from the San Francisco Art Institute and an MA and MFA from the University of California, Berkeley. He has received national and international recognition, including a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, Lifetime Achievement Award from Southern Graphics Council International, Biennial Award from Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, and an artist fellowship and residency in Giverny, France. Chagoya has had solo exhibitions at the Des Moines Art Center, Iowa; Legion of Honor Museum, San Francisco; Nevada Museum of Art, Reno; Palm Springs Art Museum, California; and San Jose Museum of Art. His work is included in the permanent collections of Art Institute of Chicago; Detroit Museum of Art; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, DC; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. He resides and works in San Francisco, where he is a professor of art practice since 1995 at Stanford University.
Since 2007, the Logan Lecture Series at the Denver Art Museum has presented talks by over 120 contemporary artists. Organized by the Modern and Contemporary Art department, the series is made possible through the generous support of Vicki and Kent Logan.
