Cesár Maxit makes street art to change your mind
By hola | Published | No Comments
Visible to anyone walking by, murals have the ability to influence everyone without gatekeeping or discriminating. One could argue it’s been that way at least since homo sapiens first started drawing on cave walls centuries ago, and certainly since the populist murals movements of the more recent past. Today the street art of Cesár Maxit serves roughly similar “communication” purposes, even if the tools have changed along with current events.
If you live in the District, chances are you’ve stumbled across Maxit’s work pasted to a wall or a lamppost. Perhaps you have seen his “fishy food” car cruising the streets of Washington. Maxit, who was born in Argentina and grew up from the age of six in Houston, has been an active creator, organizer, and artist in Washington, D.C., for more than 15 years. Often, his street art is in service to activist causes.
Maxit got into street art and became a go-to guy for activist groups in an indirect manner. He began helping campaigners express their beliefs after leaving a career as an architect. Although he sometimes identifies as an artist, he says he really feels that he specializes in communications. He helps organizations “explain what they’re trying to do.”
Although Maxit started his work with the environmental justice movement, he has expanded it to include many other subjects. Over time, the more he learned, the more that he realized that “all in all, these different movements are kind of connected. So, I just started working more on human rights, on immigrant rights.”
Through public art and posters, Maxit says, “you’re really able to put ideas in people’s heads and sort of change the conversation, just by putting stuff on the walls.”
Whether posters, frescos, graffiti, or murals, modern artists still use the walls of the public square to create art that often expresses political views, cultural values, or personal beliefs. One of the most significant movements in the mural tradition was the Mexican mural movement that began in the 1920s. The movement influenced Mexican culture through its values, techniques, and accessibility.
Furthermore, the influence of Mexican muralism reached across the border into the United States, specifically through New Deal art programs. For example, the famous American painter Jackson Pollock initially was funded through a New Deal art program called the Work Progress Administration (WPA) and was influenced by Mexican muralists such as Diego Rivera and David Siquerios. In fact, President Theodore Roosevelt modeled the WPA on Mexican muralism.
Like the works of Mexican muralism, Maxit’s street art and posters evokes themes of cultural identity, political expression, and audience accessibility.
“You need to express what you’re fighting for as well as possible,” says Maxit, underscoring the connection to the past, even if contemporary artists continue to push the medium in their own ways with their own thoughts on the form.
For example, his poster “Migrant” appears to be simple but is intentional in its design with pre-Columbian pictograms, straightforward language, and the prominent monarch butterfly. The monarch butterfly is widely known for its grand migration and thus perfectly symbolizes the poster’s message of promoting migrant rights as human rights. Per the artist’s Facebook post, the milkweed plants on either side of “Migrant” are also symbolic as the plant is both a food and shelter for the monarch butterfly. The monarch’s wings are made up of four power fists that go in each direction, which represents migration as well. At the tip of each wing there is a simple depiction of a family with the white spots along the wings as footsteps.
In all, “Migrant” utilizes visual communication and design to concisely communicate a political and social message through the cultural imagery of pictograms, power fists, and the monarch butterfly.
Similarly, Maxit’s “D.C. Statehood” mural exemplifies the unity between art and political expression along with cultural identity.
Maxit describes this mural as “a picture of a guy holding his hands to make it look like he’s saying I love you in American Sign Language (ASL). His shirt says Douglass Commonwealth 51st state because … the Douglass Commonwealth is D.C.” He’s referring to one of the proposed names for the District of Columbia if Congress ever grants D.C. statehood. Douglass, as in Frederick Douglass, the Civil War-era abolitionist, was born in Maryland, but he lived much of his life in D.C. and died in Southeast D.C.”
In terms of visual analysis, the mural is striking with its prominent orange and blue colors. The lone figure is placed in the center of the frame while holding up his hands symmetrically to say “I love you” in ASL. The symmetry and warm, bright colors make the image inviting and agreeable, which aligns with the explicit message of love and implicit message of political unity around D.C. statehood.
Simply put, the mural represents the desire of a group of people to have statehood and the political representation it would bestow. However, the well-crafted mural expresses this idea through the medium of art and cultural identity by calling upon Maryland’s history and culture. The message of love also garners sympathy for the movement.
Relating the past to the present, Maxit’s “D.C. Statehood” mural appeals to history through its connection to Douglass, a historically significant and symbolic figure. Simultaneously, the mural’s emphasis on love, usage of ASL, and the medical mask evoke the present day.
By being visually interesting, culturally relevant, and rooted in history, the piece asks passersby to consider the movement for D.C. statehood and identify with the cause itself.
The connections between Maxit’s work and Mexican muralism are apparent. Mexican muralists crystalized Mexican national identity through appeals to cultural identity and history. Similarly, Maxit’s “D.C. Statehood” mural represents people’s desire to be politically represented through both historical and contemporary appeals.
The visual communication aspect evident in both Maxit’s work and Mexican muralism is another point of connection.
Although Maxit’s audience is widely literate unlike the audience of the Mexican mural movement of a century ago, there is still a key emphasis on accessibility of a similar kind.
As Maxit puts it, to be an effective communicator, “you have to think about a wide audience and you’ve got to think about how to meet people where they’re at,” he says, noting that most people “don’t know the intricacies of the federal budget.”
In other words, contemporary artists and communicators must deal with what one might call, political illiteracy. For example, Maxit says the masses does not understand or is not aware of how policies can arise from systems such as the federal budget. The nuances are lost on them. To be an effective communicator, you must cut through that lack of awareness and communicate your message concisely, clearly, and memorably. With this form of illiteracy in mind, how one expresses a message becomes crucial.
Usually, Maxit thinks about “the easiest way to express an idea.” For example, his “Separate Oil & State” posters demonstrate how simple images and phrases are often the best form of communication due to their efficiency and clarity.
Consider “Exploitation of Mexico by Spanish Conquistadors” by Diego Rivera. First, the title makes its subject clear. Then, the imagery, although arguably more artistically complex than the posters made by Maxit, are equally straightforward to understand and feel. The indigenous people pushed to the back of the frame performing oppressive labor while the Spanish enslave and terrorize people in the foreground. Additionally, Christopher Columbus is depicted as distorted and misshapen, which further amplifies the piece’s critique of colonialism.
In all, Rivera uses this mural to critique European colonialism in a direct, striking, and efficient manner. In connection with Maxit, “Exploitation of Mexico by Spanish Conquistadors” represents creating political unity through muralism. The piece asks viewers to identify and sympathize with the oppressed and unify against the oppressors.
Many of the murals painted during the era of Mexican muralism were government funded. However, the artists often imbued the pieces with their own beliefs and ideas. For example, Rivera famously placed Leon Trotsky in a few of his murals to symbolize his friendship with the man and his support for communism.
In other words, the artists of that movement pushed their own individual ideas just as they promoted the broader ideas of cultural or political movements. Similarly, Maxit says legislation often erupts from movements on the ground.
“They start from the street. They start from people’s minds, from people wanting to fight for them,” says Maxit of movements that gain legislative or media attention.
In Maxit’s work, the art on the wall is an expression of a group of people’s beliefs or communal identity. Simultaneously, art also influences those beliefs and identities. It is a circular system.
The themes and ideas advanced by Mexican muralism were as relevant then as they are today. Contemporary street artists employ their own techniques and ideas to express the organizations and political movements they support. However, the core themes of cultural identity and visual communication are a connecting thread that spans the 100 years that separates us from Mexican muralism.
Furthermore, the challenge of communicating with a wide audience remains the key challenge for artists who want to express the importance of their message. Today, per Maxit’s analysis, streamlining, simplifying, and clarifying the message is key.
Although much has changed over the last century and even more since the days of the ancient cave drawings, humans still express themselves with paint on walls and will hopefully continue a century from now too.
“I’m not writing essays. I’m not writing articles, so I’m usually trying to figure out what are the fewest amount of words that explain the issue … and then how can you express it?” he says. “How can you express what you’re fighting for with imagery?”
—Interview by Hola Cultura’s SPEL Arts & Humanities Story Team
—Written by Mitchell Bruce
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