Enrique Chagoya
The President's Xenophobic Nightmare in a Foreign Language, 2018
Copper plate etching with UV-cured acrylic and stamped gold foil
Image: 17.5 x 20 in. Paper: 22 x 25.25 in.
Edition of 12

The President’s Xenophobic Nightmare in a Foreign Language, a new print edition by Enrique Chagoya, lampoons the rhetoric and policies of the Trump White House. In a composition based on an etching of Brazilian natives by 16th-century Belgian artist Theodorus de Bry, the 45th American president’s head is depicted on a plate surrounded by hungry cannibal women, a motley host of racist caricatures drawn from advertising and comic books, and text in Russian that translates to: “I want to wake up now.”

Chagoya explains that de Bry’s absurdly racist vision of indigenous people as cannibals was the ideal foundation for The President’s Xenophobic Nightmare…, not only for its presentation of non-European cultures as savage and fearsome, but because all of its cast of characters are women (“Nasty Women” is stamped in a Trumpian gold foil at the work’s top). The de Bry etching was a perfect vehicle for commentary “because of all the misogyny surrounding this president and his supporters,” says Chagoya, “but also because in fact, it is due to women that things are changing – whether it’s the women’s marches, Stormy Daniels, or the Me Too movement taking down powerful, predatory men.” -Nick Stone