Enrique Chagoya awarded 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship

Seven Stanford University scholars have been awarded 2021 Guggenheim Fellowships. This prestigious honor recognizes mid-career scholars, artists and scientists who have demonstrated a previous capacity for outstanding work and continue to show exceptional promise.

 

 

Enrique Chagoya is a professor of art and art history and a practicing artist. Influenced by his experiences living on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border in the late 1970s and also in Europe during the late 1990s, his artwork juxtaposes secular, popular and religious symbols in order to examine the ongoing cultural clash between the United States, Latin America and the rest of the world.

 

With his fellowship, Chagoya plans to develop new work related to social and racial inequality that the COVID-19 pandemic and protests following the death of George Floyd made painfully clear.

 

“Art may not save the world by itself, but it may help us to think more creatively and may help us fight for a better and more humanistic future with respect for the lives of our own and the life on the planet,” Chagoya said in his statement to the Guggenheim.

 

Chagoya is deeply committed to engaging the wider public on the social and environmental issues he addresses through his artwork and said he hopes to use his Guggenheim Fellowship to promote further dialogue with new audiences beyond traditional gallery and museum spaces.

 

“Now it is up to humanity, that means all of us, to participate in finding solutions to fix all of these grave issues if we want to survive as a species and save the planet’s wildlife and ecosystems,” Chagoya said.

 

Chagoya’s work can be found in many public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Metropolitan Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Cantor Arts Center and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

 

Read more about the honorees.