Mariconógraphy
MELUS, Summer 2014
“Drawing Offensive/Offensive Drawing: Toward a Theory of Mariconógraphy” unveils the ways in which queer Latinx artists and writers in Southern California developed a distinct visual vocabulary for abject homosexualities and masculinities in a powerful remapping of the offensive in the social landscape. This essay traces a visual genealogy related to maricón iconography dating back to the early twentieth century lithographs of famed Mexican printmaker José Guadalupe Posada, novels of John Rechy, and conceptual photo-text portrait collaborations of Joey Terrill and Teddy Sandoval. A theory of mariconógraphy forwards queer of color critique into art history unfastening its white neoliberal gay and lesbian subject while simultaneously new possibilities in queer Chicano visual culture studies as a field of inquiry.
MELUS: The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, Special Issue: Race and Visual Culture, 39 no. 2 (Summer 2014), 121-152. Reprinted in Chicana and Chicano Art: A Critical Anthology. Eds. Ondine Chavoya, Jennifer Gonzalez, Chon Noriega, and Tere Romo (Durham: Duke University Press, 2019).
