Review

"Corazón de el Muerte," Acrylic on Canvas.

Jason Sierra
Third World Aesthetics

By Appointment.

Plenum Art Space
504 E. 18th St.
Kansas City, MO
913.731.6402

Hours: By appointment
Runs through: Feb. 28

Artist's site: http://zapatecindustries.blogspot.com

Shakespeare's Juliet asked it first: What's in a name?

Plenty, really: everything from family pride to public image to cultural identity.

All three of those aspects meet in Jason Sierra's show Third World Aesthetics, on display this month at the Plenum Art Space in the East Crossroads.

I first met Sierra about this time last year, when ARTKC365 featured his show at the Writers Place ... only I didn't meet him as Jason Sierra but as Jason Biggers, the name given him by his adopted father. That show reflected his varied heritage, with works recalling Latino street art alongside more conventional abstracts and Expressionist pieces.

Since then, Sierra — who has always embraced all parts of his ethnic background — has rebranded himself as primarily a Hispanic artist, just as he is a member of the Latino Writers Collective. ("Sierra" is his mother's maiden name, so in Mexico he would be "Jason Biggers Sierra.")

The paintings in Third World Aesthetics continue Sierra's practice of drawing visual inspiration from street art. Thematically, they mine two main veins.

Sierra's predominant images are of the tiny casitas that are home to so many residents of Mexican border cities (Sierra grew up in El Paso and frequently crossed back and forth). He also makes reference to a  Mexican holiday which, like the Celtic-rooted Hallowe'en, is less Christian than Christianized: El Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead.

Those themes meet in today's featured piece, Corazón de el Muerte, which translates as "Heart of Death."

Morbid, right? A meditation on poverty and privation?

From an affluent Anglo perspective, maybe. From Sierra's vantage point, no way.

The Day of the Dead is not a time to mourn one's departed ancestors, but to celebrate their lives. And as the beating heart behind those fleshless ribs shows, the people who came from those ancestors are still vibrant, still fully alive.

Sierra has encoded another clue, in the shape formed by the little dwelling places of the living. It recalls a stepped pyramid, a symbol of the glories of Mexico's pre-Columbian cultures. Those cultures live on through their descendants, Sierra seems to suggest, poor perhaps in material things but rich in tradition and spirit.

No matter one's ethnic background, that idea — that wealth and possessions are not true measures of quality of life — is an aesthetic worth embracing.