Art: Nopal En La Frrente By Oscar Moo

As I walked through the museum, I looked for a piece of art that spoke to me on a personal level, having picked a Mexican Museum it wasn’t hard seeing a sculpture or painting and relating it to my childhood or connecting it to my visits to Mexico. As I was leaving, I stopped by a colorful painting that really grabbed my attention, and looked at the description and the painting for some time. I was with my younger brother and had explained to him the details of the museum visit for this class, and told him I had trouble finding a painting. He looked around and his eyes landed on the same painting that I was analyzing moments before and with a smirk he said to choose that one. The painting is by Oscar Moya and is called Nopal En La Frente/Cactus …show more content…
My first reaction was to laugh because from the first moment my eyes landed on the painting, I knew exactly what phrase the artist was conveying without looking at the description. “Nopal en la frente” is an old mocking Mexican phrase that is used when someone has evident Mexican traits or denies their culture or language and try to pass as another nationality. I chose this piece because it is something I can relate to, I have used this saying to describe others and have had this phrases used to describe me. I have heard this phrase all my life, from my mother and other family members to social media, and it has gotten a more negative connotation in recent …show more content…
The painting is mostly directed towards or showcasing people who have prominent indigenous people traits, and in 1994 many natives died due to drought, intentional poisoning, and rioting to protect their rights. Moya’s style is influenced by traditional Mexican painting style, which uses vibrant, contrasting colors to tell a story. His paintings are usually bright colors contrasting with a dark background and tied in with his Mexican ancestry. He migrated to the United States at the age of fifteen and worked as a migrant worker in Texas to Michigan, then moved to Illinois and attended the Art Institute of Chicago. He paints based on his experiences as a migrant worker and as an immigrant living in the United States. There is a popular saying ‘Ni de aqui, ni de alla’, which loosely translates to ‘Neither from here, nor there’ and it means that you don’t feel like you belong here, meaning the United States, or belong there, in Mexico, and Moya integrates that in his paintings. His painting Nopal En La Frente, expresses that saying because the man has blue skin, which is not a typical skin tone and it is reminiscent of an alien. He does not feel like he belongs in either place therefore feeling like an alien in both