Artist Yvette Mayorga’s phone case is the palest pink and bears an image of that unmistakably mid-2000s relic: a BlackBerry screen and keyboard. “A Bratz BlackBerry,” she corrects me, proudly.
It’s on brand for this rapidly ascending artist, whose works predominate with punchy pink and are grounded in her personal and familial histories as a child of Mexican immigrants raised in the Midwest during the ’90s and ’00s. Mayorga’s elaborately frosted compositions lure viewers into a maximalist world where 18th-century Rococo meets a Y2K teen-bedroom dreamscape and the Latinx experience in the US. Her works have been festooned with the likes of false eyelashes, jeweled acrylic nails, plastic nail charms, Telfar bags, cake toppers, Louis Vuitton monogram patterns, bags of Cheetos and Takis, angel figurines, gummy worms, donuts, McDonald’s fries, Nike Cortezes and Air Jordans, and Tweety Bird.
