The definition of the Mexican slang word “naco” is open to interpretation but has, until recently at least, mostly been used to describe people, behaviors or aesthetic choices seen as unrefined or unsophisticated, often in a comic way.
It is often employed as an elitist expression to describe the uneducated, and among the middle and upper classes as a synonym of bad taste.
Artist, musician and filmmaker Sergio Arau has been an unabashed fan of all things naco since the early 1980s when he basked in the success of his rock band Botellita de Jerez. In fact, his second movie (his first was the hilarious “Day without a Mexican”) was called “Naco es Chido” (Naco is Cool), a spoof about his band’s “missing” third album of the same name.
The son of film director Alfonso Arau (“Like Water for Chocolate”), Sergio Arau has been working on his distinctive pop art-style paintings for three decades, but has never showed them in a museum setting previously.
Seeing his paintings of tattooed, wrestling-masked, semi-naked men, women and angels assembled in one place for the first time, alongside his acrylic drawings, decorated jackets and guitars, edited books and texts and ipads blaring out music videos was a unusual but pleasant experience, Arau said after last week’s exhibit opening at the Universidad de Guadalajara’s prestigious Museo de las Artes (MUSA).
Arau said the word naco has more relevance in the city where he lives, Los Angeles, because it allows many young people of Mexican heritage to express their view of the world around them using a lexicon of greater cultural significance to them rather than bland English words such as nice or cool.
In an interview this week with Mas por Mas GDL, Arau said he is showing several of his satirical political cartoons from the 1980s and 1990s to remind Mexicans that they have “memories made from teflon … we vote again yet validate the same ones who have screwed us for so long.”
Arau said he is trying to produce a follow up to “Day Without a Mexican” – a satirical look at the consequences of all the Mexicans in the state of California suddenly disappearing – but admits the process is slow. Ideally, he says mischievously, he would like to cast Donald Trump in a prominent role in a sequel.
MUSA, Avenida Juarez 975, corner of Enrique Diaz de Leon. Open Tuesdays to Sundays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Call (33) 3134-1664 or visit musa.udg.mx form more information.