Mexican, 1954-2005
Adolfo Patiño was a photographer and multimedia artist who often used Mexican kitsch to critique global consumer culture. In the collaborative performance series titled La Tierra Prohíbida de Terry Holiday, Patiño envisioned the transsexual Mexican actress Terry Holiday as the embodiment of one of Andy Warhol’s superstars. In the original tiny color images, Holiday, who earlier starred in Patiño’s films and performances, preens and poses for the camera, offering an exaggerated image of conventionalized female sexuality. With their theatricality, eccentricity, and carnivalesque character, these images create a camp parody of the powerful patriarchal institutions of surveillance and censorship of queer culture in Mexico during the 1970s.
