Born in Mexico City in 1983, Enrique Sáenz is an artist with a flair for depicting social subjects. The faces and poses of the figures in his painting are minimalistic in their rendering yet charged with emotion. For over ten years he has been interested in themes related to migration, and he wrote the following statement in 2013:
“In the news, we only see masses of faceless beings who are forced to leave one place only to be rejected in another. We call them migrants and strip them of their names and their right to be human. We fail to recognize them as equals, even though we know they are individuals who have been deprived of everything, in many cases even of life. This condition of extreme precariousness terrifies the essence of our society. In recent years, a term has been coined: aporophobia, which means a fear of the poor, of those who have nothing to offer. That’s where our problem with the issue of migration lies: if it doesn’t benefit us, we don’t want it. If the migrant is wealthy, we welcome them readily…Migration is a social issue, and we should be capable of addressing it with humanity.
I don’t know what can be done; I can only keep the topic in my work, make it visible, let it move from one set of eyes to another. I used to use themes as a pretext for painting, but now I believe that the painting should be the pretext for highlighting the profound issues of the world I inhabit, issues that I consider important and not to be forgotten. The contribution of a paintbrush may seem insignificant, but it is in our collective dialogue (a visual dialogue, in this case) where the discourse begins to gain momentum.”
His previous exhibitions include two individual exhibitions at the Museo Universitario del Chopo in Mexico City; three individual exhibitions at the Museum of the City of Queretaro, Mexico; and participation in the notable national collective exhibition “La Caja” at the Museo de la SHCP in Mexico City. He also completed a series of murals for the Museo de los Conspiradores in Querétaro, Mexico where they are part of the permanent collection. He was educated at the University of Guadalajara, where he earned a Bachelor of Visual Arts.
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