Queen Mother, from the series Make ‘Em All Mexicans

As a daughter of an US Air Force officer, Linda Vallejo grew up in many different places, including the segregated South, Europe, and Los Angeles during the emergence of the Chicano Art Movement. These experiences helped focus her artistic practice on answering this question: “Do race, color, and class define our status in the world? Do color and class define our understanding and appreciation of culture?” Favoring a conceptualist strategy, she addressed these matters in projects like Make’ Em All Mexicans, which consisted on repurposing two- and three-dimensional images of celebrities and changing their skin tone to brown. In these two round portraits, the artist recast as people of color two members of the British royal family, heirs to centuries of European imperialism. Their sudden strangeness seems to answer Vallejo’s inquiry: “What if the world and all its grand historical kingdoms were ruled by Mexican royalty? It’s at first a funny notion, but slowly becomes disconcerting to many, even to Mexicans.” The artist uses humor to give viewers a comfortable space where healing narratives can emerge and be shared, because, in her words, “change is possible if we just laugh and work through it together.”