La Revista Binacional was fortunate to be present in a private chat with Hugo Crosthwaite, an artist from Tijuana who is already recognized worldwide by all experts in plastic arts and culture in general.
Hugo, simple and calm, told us about his childhood and how he grew up with his family attending the Curios in Tijuana and Rosarito.
Growing up in the chaos of a city as unique as Tijuana inspired Hugo to transform that mess into art.
Hugo’s art is quite different from other artists. Usually, when one paints, one begins with the back, the basics, the background, and one works the canvas until reaching the detail.
Hugo does not. Hugo since he begins to draw, he does it with all the detail from the beginning. Crosthwaite’s art is poetic and full of metaphors depicting real events.
This self-taught artist understood at an early age that art can be more than a canvas with brushes.
He demonstrated it with his mural titled “Shattered Mural,” where he paints faces and then breaks them into pieces, like mosaics.
Those pieces were put in material with colored tapestries and when exposed they looked like graves in a cemetery, in honor of the 53 migrants who were stuck in that truck in Texas and suffocated to death trying to reach the United States for a better life.
This is how he works, with a pure feeling of nostalgia and a cry towards society that we cannot let these things happen in our binational community.
He told us about Berenice Sarmiento Chávez and her history as an undocumented immigrant in this country. Her face was the inspiration for a series of artistic works.
Since 2008 he has carried with him a “Sketchbook” where he paints with pencil faces that he finds in his day to day, especially in front of the Cathedral in Tijuana where he sat to observe and paint black and white faces in his notebook.
Charcoal pencil, acrylic on canvas and all in black and white (because they symbolize contrast, truth, and history).
He makes short films of his art with all the symbolism that everything that begins culminates in nothing at the end, as a metaphor that everything is a cycle of life.
He recently started creating sculptures and that gave rise to CARAVAN, taking the faces from his notebook and making them mini statues recreating the journey of migrants who died in San Antonio Texas suffocated in a truck. Hugo gives a different destination to the story of the short film of him, and the migrants manage to reach their destination.
Hugo Crosthwaite is already an important name worldwide. His latest work is a short film on Dr. Anthony Fauci, which we had the privilege of watching here in San Diego thanks to the invitation of La Caja Tijuana, COTUCO Tijuana and SENSUS UCSD.
This work “A Portrait of Anthony Gauci” is in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC.
Hugo Crosthwaite makes an entire binational society immensely proud!
We look forward to continuing to see your triumphs and celebrate them together with you. Congratulations!
