Baile de los Mamónes
2026
New York City, USA
Multimedia Performance, Silkscreen, Calligraphy
Summary
Baile de los Mamónes takes the absurdity of corporate jargon and office politics and turns it into a literal dance to highlight how ridiculous it is.
The work shirts show a first-gen, working-class Chicano identity beneath a borrowed performance of whiteness. The corporate jargon is written in Old English Chicano calligraffiti. Rooted in 60s Chicano gang culture, they adopt institutional identity markers like those of the LA Times to seem more legitimate in their respective social landscape. Alongside the writing, Mesoamerican and Chicano popular culture collide with Old English.
Origins
El Danza de los Viejitos is a pre-conquest Indigenous dance from northern Mexico. After colonization, it took on a new meaning, mocking the conquistadors' movements and behavior.
Inspirations include ASCO Collective and Teatro Campesino (Luis Valdez) for their comedic, unapologetically amateur, and maximalist approach. The mamón archetype is similar to that of the Mexican-American animatronic portrayed in Luis Valdez’s Los Vendidos. We’re doing something similar to what El Danza de los Viejitos did, just pointing at a newer version of the same colonial order: the modern office, transactional networking, and the consequences of Icarian ambition.
Process
To embody the Mamón Archetype, draw from feelings of discomfort around proximity to whiteness, especially inside formal institutions like work, college, or high school. You are a sucker. You have been sold the idea that excelling in this white world would save you from everything you grew up in, but you find it empty, hollow, and destructive. You take the shirt off.
Video
Performance
Collaborators
Rutgers University
Jonathan Quizhpe
Yadira Bernardino
Katia R. Rivas