ANA SEGOVIA’S MACHO MEN

Ana Segovia loves movies. He’s a painter, but he grew up immersed in the classics of the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema (Cine de Oro), of which his great-grandfather, Fernando de Fuentes, was a leading figure. “Eighty percent of the Cine de Oro is the mythologizing of Mexican rural life, through Modernist projects that are as much for Mexicans as they are for the rest of the world,” he explains. Using tropes of masculinity, from the charro to the vaquero and all their associated accoutrements — pistols, cocks (the avian kind) — Segovia’s pictorial investigations question how moving images reflect and reproduce identity. “In my work, the composition is always rooted in cinema, even if the format varies,” he says, adding that he’s been obsessed with caballerangos (horse wranglers) since childhood. Threads of homoeroticism and humor run through his work, and he is often the punchline of his own jokes, exploring and subverting his own fascination with macho culture. His 2021 exhibition at the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Well, This Song’s Over (Pos’ se acabó este cantar) focused on the intimacy of figures, but not faces, of men in pairs and groups. For the 2024 Venice Biennale, he adapted a video depicting the subtle choreography of two neon-clad charros. Lately, he has been fictionalizing film history, allowing himself to “invent characters, movies, and archives,” painting them in his signature radiant technicolor palette. “I’m developing a body of work based on a fictional character named Ramón,” Segovia says. “But the only thing you see is his ass and his package. Close-up.”