Most immediately striking about Mendoza’s installation is its size and public accessibility, recalling the Mexican Muralism Movement that blossomed between the 1930s and 1950s in the wake of the Mexican Revolution. Led by artists such as José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Diego Rivera ( Johnson-Ortiz 2021), the movement grew out of a national project to unify post-revolutionary Mexico. The government commissioned artists to educate the country’s illiterate population about Mexican history. They painted murals that represented the narratives of indigenous and peasant populations who had been excluded from pre-revolutionary accounts of Mexican national identity. Perhaps the most famous representative of the movement, Diego Rivera, was commissioned to create his first large-scale mural project at Mexico City’s Secretaría de Educación Pública1 [SEP] in the early 1920s (Flattley 2021). He painted 120 murals that line the institution’s front two courtyards to this day. Each mural portrays scenes of labor, agriculture, industry, and culture in celebration of Mexico’s working poor and indigenous heritage. Open-air and free to the public, the murals invite Mexicans and tourists to get up close and contemplate the intricacy of brushstrokes or to step back and appreciate, as illiterate peasants of the 1920s might have, narratives of Mexico’s revolutionary emergence. The Mexican Muralism Movement thus eschewed the elitism of high art and museums, giving everyday Mexicans ready access to art that included dignified portrayals of people like themselves. A worthy example of Rivera’s work is Leaving the Mine, an east wall/ west-facing mural in the SEP Court of Labor, which illustrates the crucial work of Mexican mineworkers and their exploitation by foreign interests (Fig. 3). The mural depicts a worker (dressed in white) with his arms spread in a pose reminiscent of the crucified Christ as he is inspected by an overseer (dressed in green) for precious metals he is suspected of smuggling out of the mine. The worker’s clothes and sandals are simple compared to the overseer’s sturdy boots and green uniform, emphasizing the power differential. Even so, the martyr-like pose of the mineworker elevates him over the overseer and suggests that labor is sacrificial and saintly, making people who were once unacknowledged visible. In Diego Rivera’s own words, “For the first time in the history of art, Mexican mural painting made the masses the hero of monumental art” (Whitfield 2020). Mendoza’s installation appeals to this tradition, making large-scale, shining faces of undocumented immigrant workers visible in public spaces. Although temporary, the installations assume prominence in public settings – a dining hall by Capitol Hill and a Broadway storefront. The grand size of the portraits does more than elevate the labor of their subjects; it reinforces their 1 Secretariat of Public Education 13
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