Art of the Week

Right You Are If You Think You Are
on display now at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art

Untitled, 2003
Artist: Nelson Leirner
Born: Brazil, 1932
From the series, Right You Are If You Think You Are, 2003
Digital print of an electronically manipulated photograph of an original collage
Museum Purchase, with funds provided by Larry and Astrid Hammett, 2004

From a series entitled Right You Are If You Think You Are, this work by Nelson Leirner is based on an original collage of stickers of Minnie and Mickey Mouse and Day of the Dead skeletons shaped to mimic the continental outline of the Americas. Leirner's fusion of mass culture icons with elements of high modernism, primary colors, for example, communicates the complexity and diversity of the Americas. His work reminds us of the simple but profound idea that one's interpretation of the Americas depends on one's context.

Currently featured in the special exhibition Art of the Americas: Latin America and the United States, 1800 to Now!, on view at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art through November 21.