Codex Chicon Alvarez/Cuando El Oportunista Es Rey En El Barrio las Calles Estan Pavimentadas Con Oro y Sangre (Codex Chicon Alvarez/When the Opportunist is King in the Neighborhood, the Streets Are Paved With Gold and Blood)

1992

American, born 1950

Of Mexican and Cuban descent, Alvarez has lived and worked in the Seattle region since 1975. Alvarez had some university training but considers herself largely self-taught. She came into her artistic career during the Chicano Movement when public, community-based art raised issues about widespread prejudice, the erasure of Latino cultural heritage, and justice for migrants. The artist’s work follows this path, with the inclusion of feminist perspectives. The strident narrative seen here, in the form of an Aztec book (codex), is a kind of primer of the violence, greed, and death that has been visited upon Indigenous Peoples since Columbus. Above a floor of skulls, blinded men in suits deliver bags of money that fuel violence in the barrio. In the rear, mean wearing soldier’s garb shoot women and children. The mother protector is on the wall behind the fleeing women.

Xerograph, photograph, and acrylic on paper

22 x 33 in. (55.88 x 83.82 cm)

Gift of PONCHO

93.51

Not currently on view

Resources

Exhibition HistorySeattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Documents Northwest: 1492-1992, Oct. 22, 1992 - Mar. 28, 1993.

Seatle, Washington, Seattle Central Community College Art Gallery, Cecilia Alvarez: Past and Present, Jan. 23 - Feb. 3, 1995.

Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, The Art of Protest, Apr. 27, 2000 - Jan. 21, 2001.

Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, American Art: The Stories We Carry, Oct. 20, 2022 - ongoing.

Seattle Art Museum respectfully acknowledges that we are on Indigenous land, the traditional territories of the Coast Salish people. We honor our ongoing connection to these communities past, present, and future.

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