Jynx Prado

Seven Burlap Sacks with Painted Faces
Jynx Prado, The Seven Deadly Sins, Arcylic and Yarn on Burlap, 2023

SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS
A Queery Tale by Jynx Prado

They Perished By The Wicked … For Being True And The Fairest Of All …

In the EXTERIOR WINDOW VITRINE
February 6, 2023 – March 10, 2023
Artist Talk: Monday, February 6, 2023 @ 6PM
Reception: Monday, February 6, 2023 @ 7-9PM
 
The Cerritos College Art Gallery is pleased to present Snow White and the Seven Deadly Sins, a special Window Dressing installation by the Los Angeles-based interdisciplinary artist Jynx Prado. 
 
Deploying ample doses of humor and irony, Prado’s work seeks to intervene into the circuits of familiar iconography in order to better describe their lived environment and convey the nuances of their social life as a queer, nonbinary Mexi-Salvi American. Their practice ranges from paintings to sculptures to performances to installations, generally using burlap fabric as their unifying material. A loosely spun fiber with a rough texture and uncommonly resilient strength, burlap is fabricated material derived from the ordinary jute plant (corchorus olitorius), a safe and sustainable natural crop. Prado uses this material ambiguity, between the natural and the artificial, as a broader metaphor for the cycles of life and death present in their life and work. Once a living jute plant, in death it becomes a natural fiber that is artificial woven into a burlap pattern and then sewn together to become the embodiment of a new life, the vessel for a shared experience. 
 
This literal and metaphorical trans-formation is most prevalent in Prado’s Embodiments series, which consist of various fibrous bodies (humanoid, animalistic, and/or abstracted forms) each singularly and collectively operating as surrogates for the experience of a queer, genderfluid individual. The primary persona, manifested throughout this series though varying in form and number over time, is a character Prado has dubbed Mx. Burlap, a multiplicious figure representing the indeterminacy of the trans and/or nonbinary experience through a never-static, ever-evolving configuration. Despite, or perhaps due to, the evasiveness of their identity, Mx. Burlap is described by Prado as “wearing a burlap sack on their head,” a vague allusion, it seems, to being held hostage and/or humbled and humiliated (i.e. sackcloth and ashes), at a time when the queer community is frequently villainized, and even criminalized, both globally and, even here, in the United States. 

For their special Window Dressing installation in the Exterior Window Vitrine of the Cerritos College Art Gallery, Prado will debut Snow White and the Seven Deadly Sins: A Queery Tale, the first of a new series focused on re-presenting familiar fairy tales from a nonbinary perspective. Included in the installation are all three current Mx. Burlap forms from The Embodiments series, including one taking the place of the titular Snow White. Within the context of this queer retelling, Mx. Burlap (Snow White), laying prone on their coffin, becomes a proxy for the all-too-many victims of anti-LGBT violence today. Just as Snow White from the grim fairy tale is, at least temporarily, murdered by her wicked and jealous step-mother, the Queen, simply for being the true “fairest of them all,” trans and nonbinary people are, these days, habitually murdered just for the supposed ‘sin’ of being their true and fairest selves. As part of their ongoing installation, the artist will also randomly perform alongside their sculptures as a living and breathing embodiment, a fabulous Snow White finally awakened from their cursed slumber.

Born and currently based in Los Angeles, Jynx Prado (they/them/their) critiques, questions, and challenges assumptions about the natural and the artificial within the human experience through an interdisciplinary practice using found objects, fabrics, and their own body. Prado received their MFA at Otis College of Art and Design in 2020 and their BA in California State University Dominguez Hills in 2018. Their work has been exhibited across Southern California, including at Grand Central Art Center, (Santa Ana), Frank M. Doyle Arts Pavilion at Orange Coast College (Costa Mesa), the VAMA Gallery (Los Angeles), Stay Gallery (Downey), Angels Gate Art Gallery (San Pedro), South Gate Art Gallery (South Gate), NOMAD for the Torrance Art Museum (Torrance, CA), and the Bendix (Los Angeles). They have also performed nationally and internationally in the Grand Central Art Center (Santa Ana), El Segundo Museum of Art (Los Angeles, CA), The Carnegie International 57th Edition (Pittsburgh), and QiPO 02 (Mexico City).