Rio Yañez In The House: Understanding Ghetto Frida & The Great Tortilla Conspiracy

Last week, we overheard Rio Yañez talking about tortilla conspiracies at April Flores’ Love Toy Art Show & Glamazons DVD Release in San Francisco and were instantly intrigued. There’s a conspiracy about tortillas!? Back at the crib, some intrepid investigative reporting revealed that Rio is a San Francisco based artist and creator of one of the baddest murals in SF: Ghetto Frida’s Mission Memories.

So we got in touch with Sr. Yañez to get the inside juice on the revolutionary power of tortillas and why Frida looks so good with that Diego tat on her neck. Check it.

Alejand: Ok so Rio, thanks for chatting. Right off the bat, burning question: What is The Great Tortilla Conspiracy?

Rio: The Great Tortilla Conspiracy is the world’s most dangerous tortilla art collective. We’re a collective of three Bay Area artists that work in the medium of tortillas.

Alejand: Ok. So what’s so dangerous about tortillas?

Rio: Tortillas are dangerous on many levels. We address many political issues through our work on tortillas, including genetically modified corn crops, immigration, and our current wars overseas. We’re also reclaiming the tortilla as an art medium and reconnecting them to our indigenous roots.

Alejand: Wow, right, I guess you can do a lot with tortillas. How do you usually display them? In a gallery or like as street food? What’s it feel like to have people eating your artwork?

Rio: It’s evolved over the last 3 years. We started as a residency at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. We’ve only had one formal gallery exhibit, which was in the summer of 2008. Most of our activities are event based. We go to an art event, protest, or fair and we create our artwork on the spot. We then serve it to the public to be eaten in quesadilla form.
As someone who saw a lot of pretentiousness in art school, I always thought it was subversive to see the public eat your work. At the end of the day, there’s no trace of our creations. People have either eaten them or taken them away, we give everything out.

Alejand: Yeah, that sounds badass. So let’s get talking about the mural you did of Ghetto Frida. I drove by it and instantly thought of my mom who has tons of Frida paintings and reimaginations all over her house. Frida’s image is very prevalent in our culture. What inspired you to take her to the ghetto?

Rio: It all dates back to when 50 was blowing up and people were hyping the fact that he had been shot 9 times, survived, and went on to become famous. People thought that it was the most gangster thing on the face of the Earth at the time. In that context, I thought Frida surviving her grisly street car accident and then going on make her amazing art was equally badass.
I started to experiment in photoshop with images of her. At first, I overlayed chola makeovers on top of photographs of her but I eventually moved on to digital illustrations.

Alejand: Right and now the images are up as a mural in the Mission, but the style is very unique relative to many of the traditional works we generally think of as Mexican murals. Where does your drive to reinvent Chicano art come from?

Rio: It all comes from my love of comic books. As a kid, I almost never saw the worlds of comic books and Chicano art come together. As an artist I’ve been trying to bring the two together in as many different ways as possible.

Alejand: Ok cool, that makes total sense. So, with all these distinct mediums, will you draw me my next tattoo?

Rio: I’m totally down.

Alejand: Haha, awesome. I’ll be in touch then. Thanks man, I appreciate the time, and we look forward to checking out your new works. Anything we should be aware of in the near future?

Rio: I’ll be curating a Day of the Dead exhibit in San Francisco at SOMArts. It’s a contemporary take on Dia de los Muertos with artists from around the world. I’ll also be doing the graphics for the show.
I’m in talks with video performance artist Maya Escobar to do something about Latina Magazine’s Wise Latina shirts that they’re selling through their site.

Alejand: Cool, perfect, thanks a lot Rio.

Rio: Take care.

Click here or on the lucha tortilla below for a full gallery of Rio’s work: