The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of Riverside Art Museum (The Cheech) and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Latino’s decision to launch with an exhibition about the de la Torre Brothers speaks to the duo’s unique vision of the Latinx experience and American culture. This is explored in their work through a combination of humor and critical earnestness, borrowing elements from Mexican culture (pre-Columbian, historical, and popular) and other places in a sort of chameleonic-kaleidoscopic process that explodes into a myriad of layered images and meanings. Through their work, audiences will become familiar with concepts such as identity, mestizaje, Latinhood, hybridity, globalization, biculturalism, and more as well as interacting and engaging with the work through public programs and school tours.

The Brothers have a vision of the Latino experience and American culture. having lived in both for most their lives. If ever there were a case where materials and their masterful use provide a perfect match—and metaphor—for an artist’s concepts and themes, it’s in the art of Jamex and Einar de la Torre. How better to convey the rich complexity and alchemic intermingling of border cultures than through mixed media creations as multilayered, thought-provoking and engaging as the cultures themselves?