An Ofrenda for Dolores del Rio

Amalia Mesa-Bains, An Ofrenda for Dolores del Rio, 1984, revised 1991, mixed media installation including plywood, mirrors, fabric, framed photographs, found objects, dried flowers and glitter, 96 x 72 x 48 in. (243.8 x 182.9 x 121.9 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Smithsonian Institution Collections Acquisition Program, 1998.161, © 1991, Amalia Mesa-Bains

Artwork Details

Title: An Ofrenda for Dolores del Rio
Artist: Amalia Mesa-Bains
Date: 1984, revised 1991
Location: Not on view
Dimensions: 96 x 72 x 48 in. (243.8 x 182.9 x 121.9 cm)
Copyright: © 1991, Amalia Mesa-Bains
Credit Line: Museum purchase through the Smithsonian Institution Collections Acquisition Program
Mediums Description: mixed media installation including plywood, mirrors, fabric, framed photographs, found objects, dried flowers and glitter
Classifications: Sculpture
Highlights: Latinx Art
Subjects: Monument — memorial — del Rio
Portrait female — Rio, Dolores del
Architecture — religious — altar
Object Number: 1998.161
Research Notes: 1998.161.pdf
Linked Open Data: https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/1998.161

Artwork Description

An Ofrenda for Dolores del Rio draws viewers in with its sumptuous pink fabric, rows of black-and-white pictures, and an arrangement of fanciful objects set in a niche. Mesa-Bains created this work to honor Dolores del Rio, the Mexican actress who dazzled audiences in the United States and Mexico from the 1920s until her death in 1983. The artist retooled the vernacular and domestic practice of the ofrenda (an offering to the deceased) to memorialize a cultural icon whom she and other Chicanas admired. Mesa-Bains implied this relationship through her ample use of mirrors, which reflect and incorporate the viewer into her installation.

Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art, 2013

An Ofrenda for Dolores del Rio atrae a los espectadores con su suntuosa tela rosada, sus fotografías en blanco y negro alineadas, y sus arreglos de objetos fantasiosos agrupados dentro un nicho. Mesa-Bains creó esta obra en honor a Dolores del Rio, la actriz mexicana que deslumbró al público estadounidense y mexicano desde los años veinte hasta su muerte, en 1983. La artista reestructuró la práctica doméstica y vernácula de la ofrenda (un homenaje a los muertos) para conmemorar a un ícono cultural admirado por ella y otras chicanas. Mesa-Bains sugirió esta relación por medio de la profusa utilización de espejos, que reflejan e incorporan al espectador a su instalación.

Nuestra América: la presencia latina en el arte estadounidense, 2013

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Our America Audio Podcast - Amalia Mesa-Bains, "An Ofrenda for Dolores del Rio"
Installing "An Ofrenda for Dolores del Rio" - Time-lapse

AMALIA MESA-BAINS: My name is Amalia Mesa-Bains. I am a first-generation Chicana movement. I’ve been making art for around 35 years, and the Dolores del Río piece is one of the primary pieces I made during the 1980s. I met Dolores del Río, a Mexican and American film star, in 1983 and began the work in ‘84. The piece that is in this show is a recreation of the original. Dolores del Río was someone I watched with my mother. She was not from my generation. When I began the piece, my mother helped me collect some of the objects that might represent her. She was a bicultural figure that played glamorous and exotic movie stars in the western movies of Hollywood and simultaneously in the Mexican movies of the scena. She played heroines, people who were abandoned – one of her most famous, “María Candelaria,” she plays an indigenous woman. So I felt that for people in my generation who sought constantly to find images of beauty that related to us, she was an extraordinary figure and when I met her in 1983, she was well into her late ‘70s, and she was still incredibly beautiful.

I did the piece as an homage, an homenaje, which is done during the Days of the Dead, and instead of doing the traditional altar of three tiers, it was my first moment of transforming and innovating on the tradition of the altars, or ofrendas is the more realistic way to talk. It is an offering. I decided to make it into a woman’s vanity, and I used mirrors as a way of engaging the audience of seeing themselves within her life, and I developed two sides to the altar: one that had to do with her American side and one that had to do with her Mexican side. She was quite well known for having scandalized her very upper-class family by going to Hollywood to be in the movies, but in her older years she returned to Mexico and developed a school for women who wanted to go and film at a day care center so that women who had children could continue their work.

I’m very proud of the Dolores del Río piece because it reminds me of my mother, who was the person who introduced me to her. My mother saw her and some of the famous actors of the Scena de Oro or the Golden Age of cinema in Mexico, in Los Angeles in the ‘40s. My mother passed away in 2004, and the museum was kind enough to let me have my mother’s image next to Dolores del Río. So when people are looking at the altar and they see the image of Dolores del Río in the silver dress, the beautiful, young girl next to her is Maria Gonzales Mesa.

Exhibitions

Media - 2011.12 - SAAM-2011.12_1 - 77591

Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art

October 25, 2013–March 2, 2014

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art presents the rich and varied contributions of Latino artists in the United States since the mid-twentieth century, when the concept of a collective Latino identity began to emerge.