Rogues and Reinas

Works by Erin Currier | Acrylic and mixed media on panel

For anyone familiar with my work, there are few, if any, of the hundreds of people whom I have portrayed who are not "rogues" or "reinas" in some way.  By "rogue", I am referring to someone who is mischievous: a rebel who resists or defies authority or convention; "reina" is the eminent and supreme feminine: a self-sovereign queen who rules her own world.

In developing the Rogues and Reinas series, I did not need to venture farther than the confines of New Mexico's Latilla fences to encounter vivid examples of roguish rebellion and queenly dignity personified: in the youthful exuberance of Taos' Fiesta Queen and Princessas; in land rights leaders such as Reies Tijerina-- who made an audacious stand at the Tierra Amarilla Courthouse; and in Saint Blandina Segale-- aka "Fastest Nun in the West"-- who once talked Billy the Kid out of killing a man. With its vast stretches of uninhabitable wilderness, it's raging whitewater rivers and steep wind worn canyons, New Mexico demands an especially fierce and enduring spirit. From the Navajo Nation of the Dine' to Greg Jackson's world-renowned UFC training ring in Albuquerque, our corner of the world has, for millennia, been the place that warriors call home.

If there is one single unifying force that unites all of the individual rogues and reinas whom I have portrayed in this new series, it is that they are all fighters: not just fighting for belts (a worthy endeavor in and of itself-- undertaken by Holly Holm and Johnny Tapia); but also fighting to uphold cultural traditions, to preserve the natural world, and to defend those who cannot defend themselves against police brutality and corporate abuse-- as illustrated in Las Superheroes Abogadas. The 21st century is a time in which cultural traditions-- such as the sheep slaughtering and language sharing inherent in the annual Miss Navajo Nation event-- are as tenuous as the uranium-mined lands from whence they emerged.  Indeed, not far from the Southernmost point of the Rio Grande, Honduran Indigenous Lenca leader Berta Caceres sacrificed her life attempting to save her ancestral lands and water, and, with it, her cultural traditions, from resource extraction industries.  From New Mexico, to Central America, and beyond, age-old traditions from Saint carving to boxing matches to pageants to subsistence farming, are threatened not just by corporate resource extraction interests, but by homogenizing forces that, often under a guise of political correctness, manage to monitor and condemn most everything.

Rogues and Reinas celebrates individuals who have the courage to compete in both beauty pageants and cage fights, to demand an end to police brutality and racism, to defend the natural world, and to uphold and preserve that which is being quickly swept away: from Bulto carving to Native languages to Kung fu techniques to soil and seeds...

Erin Currier May 2016