Print of Shanprimroseart's Acrylic painting 'El Casta' from her Mexico Series. Painted in Puebla, Mexico in July 2019. 200GSM Paper.
Description:
This is the second painting of my Mexico series and
is influenced by the art of Mexico’s colonial period.
When the Spaniards colonised what is now called
Mexico, they commissioned ‘Casta paintings’, which
were portraits of a man and woman, of different
classes/races, and their child.
They were painted to create a complex hierarchical
system of race classification. Due to this, classism
is still extremely prevalent
in Mexico to this day.
On each Casta Painting there is small text that
states which mixed-race category the mother, father,
and child fit into. For example “Espanol y India
produce Mestiso’
Learning this information about the impact of
Mexico’s colonisation raised many questions about
my own “Australian” identity. As I am of mixed-race
myself (My mother is from Burma (Myanmar) and my
father is Australian (European)) I wanted to create a
piece that spoke about my own heritage.