• Alejandro Diaz

  • 2009

Artist's Website

Grant Summary
Support to expand the artist’s “handmade sign” project to Mexico City and surrounding rural towns.
Keywords
Artist Statement
In 2003 I began a series of public interventions / performances where I made, sold, and distributed hand-painted cardboard signs to passers-by in Manhattan's Fifth Avenue shopping district.  With slogans such as “Make Tacos Not War”, “There’s No Place Like Homeless”, and “In the Future Everyone will be Famous for $15.00”, these conceptual, campy and political signs continue to inform my work and exemplify my ongoing interest in humor infused politics and in art as a form of entertainment, social activism and free enterprise. My newer works in sculpture and installation continue to expand on the “hand-made” sign as a form of public vernacular speech and as a form of text drawings grounded in the aesthetics of poverty.

  • Make Your Own Damn Tortillas... 2009, Alejandro Diaz, Diorama consisting of traditional pre-Columbian implements for grinding corn and making tortillas. A disgruntled absent figure has left behind a sign – perhaps as a wishful counterpoint to the stereotype of Mexican passivity. Courtesy of the artist and the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum.

  • Enchiladas at the Plaza 2003, Alejandro Diaz Courtesy of the artist.

  • Please Do Not Touch 2009, Alejandro Diaz, Faux electrical unit, cardboard sign. Mexican laissez faire attitude towards the imperfect, the unfinished, and the downright dangerous. Courtesy of the artist.

  • Breakfast Tacos at Tiffany's 2003, Alejandro Diaz Courtesy of the artist.

  • Lost Our Lease 2009, Alejandro Diaz, Mexican birdcage, cardboard sign. Courtesy of the artist and the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum .