As part of Festival Latinx 2016 at UPenn, the exhibit “Mextasy: Seductive Hallucinations of Latina/o Mannequins Prowling the American Unconscious” came to showcase its mashup of irreverent and boisterous Latino art.

Both a presentation and a pop-up exhibit, ‘Mextasy” examines American visual culture reflecting images and stereotypes of Latinas and Latinas in the United States. The creative mind behind the show is William Nericcio, a professor at San Diego State University, who visited Philly on Feb. 22.

The pop-up exhibit grew out of the book Nericcio published in 2007 with UT Press, “Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the ‘Mexican’ in America,” which has been described as a “rogues' gallery of Mexican bandits, bombshells, lotharios, and thieves saturates American popular culture.”

“It’s an academic book and it did very well. I was invited by a museum in South Texas to convert the book, which focuses in all sorts of nasty Latino and Latina stereotypes, into an exhibition. And because I collect all these ugly stereotypes [objects], in 2009 we converted it into this traveling museum circus of horrors,” Nericcio said.

He also described the show as a defiant and joyous “no” to voices of hate. “It is about the ecstasy of being Latino and Latina in the United States today. An antidote to all the hate spewing from the mouths of people like Donald Trump, Rush Limbaugh,  Ann Coulter or Lou Dobbs.”

The show includes art by a diversity of Latino and Latina artists of different backgrounds. “These are artists that resist stereotypes, that break them down and attack them. I also include my own crazy art that directly reacts to and against stereotypes of Latinos and Latinas in American mass entertainment culture.”

A Mexican-American with a Sicilian last name, Nericcio said that the show also seeks to be inclusive in terms of the diversity in the Latino experience.“It is not just about Mexicans, the show is an embrace of pan-Latinidad. The funny thing about the entertainment industry is that it does not differentiate between flavors of Latinidad, so the show it’s not just focus on Mexicans, because Hollywood doesn’t care when it comes to Latinos and Latinas,” Nericcio said.

“Mextasy” has been presented in over 30 parts of the country and it intends to continue an ongoing tour with its message.  “For the first time probably since the ‘anti-bracero movement’ it’s cool in many parts of America to embrace your hate and fear of people who speak Spanish, of people who look Latino and Latina.”

“You can be walking home from work and be beat up by people, it happened all across the East Coast after that ‘baboso’ [Trump] opened his mouth,” Nericcio said. “The message of this exhibit is ‘you are not getting us down,’ ‘¡aquí estamos y qué!’ This is our country as much as anyone's and we are going to make it great with or without you.”

Currently Nericcio is also working on a TV series called ‘Mextasy’ — an Anthony Bourdain-style documentary that goes all over the “mundo latino” to interview rising stars across the spectrum.

For more information about the project visit mextasy.blogspot.coma or follow William Nericcio through Twitter @eyegiene

Teaser Mextasy Ingles from Blindspot on Vimeo.