The Art of Dissent

This sticker was meant to be posted in people’s front windows to ward off the incursion of ICE agents into the Chicano neighbourhoods of Los Angeles. The artist laughingly admits that, because of the Catholic image of the Virgin Mary, they were also very effective at scaring off Jehovah’s Witnesses.

By Will Novosedlik

Anyone who has followed this column over the years will know that I have a passion for activist design – and the bolder the better.

This past summer, while researching a book that I am working on with Yukon-based Indigenous Canadian designer Mark Rutledge, we came across the work of Ernesto Yerena Montejano, an American-born Indigenous artist of Yaqui heritage. Immediately struck by his no-holds-barred political messaging and bold use of form and colour, I knew I had to hear his story.

The Yaqui people are native to lands along the Rio Yaqui in what is now the northwestern Mexican state of Sonora. Their history since first contact with the Spanish in 1533 follows the familiar settler colonial pattern of military confrontation, violent armed struggle, blood-soaked conquest, dispossession and displacement that we have seen play out all over the world wherever Europeans have colonized Indigenous populations. It is estimated that the Yaqui population at time of first contact was 30,000. By 1936 it was down to 10,000 – 30% of whom were children.

By the early 1900s many of the surviving Yaqui had been sold into slavery, but some managed to move north to establish enclaves in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. It was in one of these enclaves, in a small Californian city called El Centro located about 113 miles east of San Diego and a few miles north of the US-Mexican border, that Ernesto was born and raised.

He had always been interested in art and design, especially of the political kind. As a youth he had a passion for bands like Rage Against the Machine and Public Enemy. He had an older cousin who was studying art history and who introduced Ernesto to the work of Shepard Fairey. Ernesto was only 12 years old, but he was hooked.

The ‘calavera’, or sugar skull, is an image that Ernesto uses over and over again for different purposes. An iconic image taken from the Mexican tradition of the Day of the Dead, we see it on the left being used to promote the Cirque d Soleil’s production Luzia and on the right to promote the band Jane’s Addiction.

After visiting an exhibit of the artist’s work in San Diego when he was 19, Ernesto approached Fairey to ask for an internship. “It was no dice”, says Ernesto. But he persisted, and sometime later while visiting a talk Fairey gave in Los Angeles, Ernesto pressed him again and this time Fairey brought him into his practice. He stayed there for several years before establishing his own studio, but they still collaborate on projects from time to time.

Another important influence was musician and activist Zack de la Rocha, lead vocalist of the band Rage Against the Machine, to whom he was introduced by Fairey. Ernesto was impressed by the way de la Rocha used his music to raise political consciousness and told him so. Zack then encouraged Ernesto to do the same with his art. He was reluctant at first, but Zack pressed him and thus begun Ernesto’s journey as a visual activist.

While Ernesto’s output is not 100% political, it’s the political imagery that he is known for. In fact it was because of his pull-no-punches messaging that, when we began to see early reports of the ICE raids in L.A., we felt it was urgent that we get in touch. It took a while for him to get back to us – so long, in fact, that we began to wonder if he was one of the unfortunate souls who were grabbed off the streets and taken into custody. Given the boldness of his work that did not seem unlikely. When he finally did respond, we breathed a deep sigh of relief.

An example of his boldness is his poster for Free Palestine. He’s done a few versions of this, one of which he has made available for download and printing by anyone who wants it. As anyone following American politics knows, taking a stand against the genocide in Gaza is highly risky.

We asked if he had experienced any backlash for it. “Yes, there’s a radio station that I was going to do a mural for recently,” says Ernesto “They were very excited to move ahead, but in the middle of drawing up the contract they suddenly pulled out. I’m pretty sure it was because of my Palestine poster.” He goes on to say that he did his first Palestine poster in 2010. “I’ve always said that the Palestine issue is a litmus test of where you stand on human rights.”

While Ernesto’s political work is largely self-funded, he is able to support it with different revenue streams. Says Ernesto, “I do a lot of work for unions, I do workshops, different designs for universities, book designs, album covers and movie posters. I also do talks. So I have several different sources of income.”

One of the most striking things about Ernesto is his honest self-examination, and his willingness to freely and openly share the fact that he struggles with anxiety and depression. His website features a long confession of frustration and grief at the loss of  connection to his ancestral culture:

“I often think about the reason why I don’t speak any of my original Indigenous languages. I wonder what I am missing out on in terms of food, cultural nuances, dance, music, virtues, knowledge etc. Sometimes I can’t help but become frustrated and feel resentment against the dominant society.” 

He goes on to explain what the making art does for him:

“One of the main reasons I love to create art is because I get to express these anxieties of loss while at the same time reclaiming and healing what has been lost. Creating has become a therapeutic process for me. When I don’t make art for a while I feel completely trapped by anger and frustration towards the state of the world. When I express myself I feel liberated.”

For Yerena, the hummingbird symbolizes the precarity of the human condition. He explains that because it has to work so hard to find food, the hummingbird is constantly on the brink of death. He sees that as analogous to how working-class people have to work so hard just to make ends meet.

As our conversation draws to a close, Ernesto is frank about the challenges of maintaining a studio in Los Angeles. “It’s gotten really hard to fund things. I’m going to move my studio to my hometown with all of my gear to team up with an organization down there and have more of a community space. It’s just so expensive to run, you know?”

Moving back to his hometown will not only save money, but may also help bring him closer to his roots and help him recover the sense of connection to his ancestors that he so deeply yearns for. God bless Ernesto Yerena Montejano.

Will Novosedlik is a Toronto-based writer, designer and editor. He is known for a critical perspective on the socioeconomic impact of design, advertising and marketing.