Carnaval, Tlaxcala
Photograph
Carnaval, Tlaxcala
1974
Gelatin silver print, printed 1994
Image: 35.2 × 35.7 cm (13 7/8 × 14 1/16 in.)
Paper: 40.4 × 50.6 cm (15 7/8 × 19 15/16 in.)
Purchase with funds from the Ford Motor Company Fund
1994.1229.0008
Inscriptions verso BL (pencil): Carnaval, Tlaxcala 1974
verso BR (signed in pencil): Gracelia Iturbide
verso BR (signed in pencil): Gracelia Iturbide
TextGraciela Iturbide claims to work against photography that “present[s] a touristy and folkloric Mexico,” but art critics often lament her picturesque, or sentimental, approach to Mexico’s indigenous peoples. Here, Iturbide appears to play to foreign notions of Mexico’s exoticism, but her photograph speaks to the hybrid nature of Mexican national identity. Under Spanish colonial rule, annual carnival celebrations suspended social strictures, providing indigenous peoples—who donned masks and masqueraded as characters of other genders—the opportunity to practice their outlawed religious traditions in public.
