Introduction

Guillermo Gomez-Pena is an artist who has dedicated his life’s work to portraying minorities and those who are considered foreigners. Since he was originally from Mexico and later moved to the United States, much of his art describes his journey across the border along with many other people’s stories. He tries to get his audience to feel and see what life is like for the immigrants and other minorities. He also tries to change the stereotypes that people have about Mexico and immigrants. Gomez-Pena mixes English and Spanish, fact and fiction, social reality and pop culture, Chicano humor and activist politics to create a "total experience" for the viewer. He has a way of engaging the audience in the thought provoking issues he raises through his art. He uses many different artistic mediums to accomplish these goals such as video, radio, performances, the written word, photography, and installations.

Gomez-Pena’s performance and installation work has been presented at over seven hundred venues across the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Europe, Australia, the Soviet Union, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Brazil and Argentina, and has published eight books. He is exceptionally inventive in exploring intercultural issues with the use of mixed genres and experimental languages. His work is changing people’s ideas about minorities and foreigners, and he is questioning the stereotypes of the majority. As such, Gomez-Pena became the first Mexican/Chicano artist to receive a MacArthur Fellowship, and in 1995, he was included in The UTNE Reader’s "List of 100 Visionaries." In 1997 he received the American Book Award for The New World Border.

Most of his work with performance art deals with the interaction between the United States and Mexico. Gomez-Pena has started a performance art workshop that deals with just that. He wants to create citizen diplomacy and have collaboration across the borders between the U.S. and Mexico, so that communities of artists can transition between the borders as they please. Not only does this organization set Gomez-Pena aside from all other artists, his performance art does also. It is heavy intensive in audience interaction and elaborate costumes which exemplifies the message that he is delivering. Some of his most noted works include Border Brujo and the Cruci-fiction Project. As he continues his performance art into the future it can be certain that we will continue to see collaboration efforts at work between the US and Mexico.