Nicolas De Jesus: A Mexican Artist for Global Justice

Well-known for his etchings on bark paper featuring dazzling skeleton-characters working, celebrating, walking the streets, or crossing borders, Nicolas De Jesus’s political commitment is also expressed through powerful large-scale paintings that tackle a wide range of urgent themes including immigration, human rights, and environmental instability.

Nicolas De Jesus’s art offers a nostalgic and yet lucid interpretation of our world. While his art emerges from Mexican artistic traditions, it is coupled with his international experience in cities like Chicago, Paris, and Jakarta. His work also addresses crises like the storming of the US Capitol, the repression faced by migrants and Black Americans, and the disasters of COVID 19. Covering three decades of artwork, this book offers a challenge to the conventional definition of contemporary art.

With essays by Felipe Ehrenberg (late contemporary artist, Mexico); Patrice Giasson (Alex Gordon Curator of Art of the Americas, Neuberger Museum of Art); Aline Hemond (Professor of Anthropology, Universite de Picardie-Jules Verne); Julian Kreimer (Associate Professor of Art History, SUNY-Purchase); Caroline Perree (art historian; Associate Researcher, CEMCA); Pablo Piccato (Professor of History, Columbia University)