¿LUCHA IDENTIDAD - ROL LIBRE? IN AN INCOMPLETE DESCRIPTIVE ORDER
¿LUCHA IDENTIDAD - ROL LIBRE? EN UNA DISPOSICIÓN INCOMPLETA Y DESCRIPTIVA
temporary public intervention in Mexico
2 posters 43cm x 84cm
June 2008

2 poster show the existence – or as well the absence – of women in Lucha Libre (wrestling)’s history in Mexico.

During my research it was very difficult to receive detailed information about the female fighters (when did they live, fight and loose their mask), nor to find fotos from the masks that have been used by the fighters. My order is thus very fragmentary and incomplete.


The first poster shows possible influences on the use of masks in Lucha Libre through a funeral’s mask from Teotihuacán (classic period of Mesoamerica) and the first masks of Lucha Libre: of the male fighter Ciclón Mc Key from the year 1933 and of the female fighter La Dama Enmascarada around 20 years later, in the 50’s.

The second poster shows the incomplete order of Lucha Femenil’s mask, that I could find and possible influences on the female fighter’s images: Virgen Guadalupe - Doña Marina, Malinche, Malintzin/Malinalli (the virgin or mother and therefore guardian – the prostitute and/or traitor) (1), La Comandanta Ramona (an indigenous zapatistafighter, who a.o. put through „Revolutionary Women’s Bills“) and the aztec goddesses, who are part of Guadalupe’s myth (2): Coyolxauhqui, Coatlicue, Cihuacoatl and Tonantzin.


The poster’s compostion is related to Aztec and Maya Codices, that are made of pictograms and ideograms. The colour, that I chose for the prints, attempts to get as close as possible to the red ochre, that was made out of earth and used in the codices.

200 poster were printed and placed around the arenas in Mexico. (June 2008)


(1) more about Malinche's myth: Norma Alarcón Traddutora, Traditora: A Paradigmatic Figure of Chicana Feminism, Jean Franco On the Impossibility of Antigone and the Inevitability of La Malinche: Rewriting the National Allegory, Margo Glantz La Malinche, sus padres y sus hijos, Carlos Monsiváis La Malinche y el Primer Mundo, Fernanda Nuñez Becerra La Malinche: De la Historia al Mito, Octavio Paz Los hijos de la Malinche, Rachel Phililips Marina/Malinche: Masks and Shadows, Serret Estela Identidad de género e identidad nacional en México

(2) Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera The New Mestiza, Aunt Lute Books, San Francisco, 2007