Omar Mendoza
OSGF
Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session IV
Omar Mendoza is an artist from Mexico City whose practice is based on the creation of paintings with natural colors as a form of poetic resistance. Over the last few years, Mendoza has developed a body of work that criticizes the eradication of ancestral knowledge in Mesoamerica due to colonial processes, still present today.
Mendoza conceives his works as living entities, as he creates colors from plants, tree bark and flowers collected in Tlacuilotepec, his father's hometown, along with organic pigments obtained from local markets. These coloristic techniques are inspired by those used in pre-Hispanic codices and murals. The artist prepares the canvases by hand using cotton and extracts inks through a process in which water, heat and time intertwine. Previous drawings are based on dreams and personal experiences that connect with symbolic elements of pre-Hispanic art.
Some of the pigments remain immutable, while others may change over time, reflecting the artist´s intention to evoke the universal nature of change and transformation. These living works dialogue with historical memory and Native American worldviews.