Museo Amparo presents Dr. Lakra on view through 9 May 2011.
Jerónimo López Ramírez (born 1972, Oaxaca, Mexico) is a self-taught illustrator and tattoo artist who signs his work as Dr. Lakra. This alias reflects the artist’s tendency towards rebellion— “doctor” is a title that commands respect, while “lakra” is Spanish slang for a delinquent and a play on the word lacra, which translates as a scar or a blemish.
Lakra scours flea markets and bookstores around the world for surfaces to draw upon, including vintage prints, magazines, postcards, movie posters, and photographs. These materials are often politically and culturally charged, including portraits of politicians, seductive imagery from advertisements, and Mexican pop cultural figures like Pedro Infante and lucha libre wrestlers.
Lakra is also a collector of body art traditions. His own tattoos reflect his experiences with Maori, Thai, Chicano, and Philippine cultures, and his artwork combines these designs with a galaxy of symbols drawing from inner-city gangs, pulp fiction, pre-Columbian culture, and religion. Like revered Mexican illustrator José Guadalupe Posada, who is known for his iconic Day of the Dead imagery, Lakra marries the comic and the macabre in order to try and challenge traditional social structures and mores. Straddling the line between vulgar and charming, his drawings reconsider conventional ideas of beauty, good taste, and individual versus collective identity.
In addition to these intimate works on paper and ink, as well as the needle and ink interventions on plastic objects, Lakra has created a mural in situ for Museo Amparo as part of his first solo exhibition in a museum in our country.
The self-titled exhibition “Dr. Lakra” is organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art- Boston and curated by Pedro Alonzo.
Dr. Lakra, “Sin título/Untitled (Retrato de mujer con calaca),” 2007. Ink on vintage magazine, 11-1/8 x 8-5/8″, Luis Alvarez Vila. Image courtesy of the artist and kurimanzutto, Mexico City. Photo: Michel Zabé Studio.
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