A turquoise and silver body glistens, with variations of color that suggest feathers. There are two eyes and a ruby-red mouth, but no beak and no sign of wings. This whimsical bird-like creature looks like a sculpture, but it is, in fact, an incredibly detailed piñata – made from cardboard and paper.
Roberto Benavidez, a Mexican-American artist hailing from Texas but now living in Los Angeles said his ornate piñata oeuvre is inspired by Hieronymus Bosch, a Dutch medieval painter known for his fantastical creatures.
“I want people to see these and see a piñata. I want my work to expand the breadth of what ‘piñata’ means to people,” he reflects from his studio.
Benavidez’s works are firmly directed at the art world. After studying sculpture, he switched from working with metals to paper because it was cheaper and more accessible. Since then, piñata has allowed Benavidez to explore concepts such as identity, gender, race, sexuality, beauty and sin.
“If people think of it as a piñata, then they don’t value it. That’s a narrative we need to change.”
Piñatas are usually found at discount stores and party shops in the US. The colorful creations are ready to be bought for children’s birthday parties, where they will be smashed for their hidden, sweet bounty. Culturally, “piñata” evokes the idea of a craft, something cheap, fun and fit to be obliterated.
It’s partly for this persistent image that a growing number of Latino artists are working to broaden and elevate how Americans view piñatas and its history. Some are carving out a place for piñatas in the arts world, while others use the object to make pointed social and political commentary.
“It’s (the piñata) hugely symbolic of our culture, but here it’s been appropriated and taken on a different meaning. I want to reclaim it and elevate it in people’s minds,” said Justin Favela, expressing his frustrations with the hijacking of piñata culture.
His artworks are an institutional critique, highlighting that art made from ephemeral materials has a place on gallery walls.
In the mid-2010s, Favela made headlines when he covered a Las Vegas Hotel in brilliant pink and green crepe paper. He followed that up with two full-size car piñatas. The bright green, purple and silver lowriders appeared in group exhibitions in Los Angeles and Arkansas, and are among his most recognizable works.
“The car is such an American symbol, but the lowrider and the piñata are very much symbols of Mexican and Latino identity,” Favela says. “I was interested in that tension and looking at the contribution Chicano culture has made in America.”
Favela has recently been producing highly detailed “piñata paintings”, inspired by the 19th-century landscapes by Mexican artist José María Velasco. His versions see him cut and paste pieces of bright paper as a nod to the originals of Velasco’s art. The result is striking, hyper-colored paper landscapes.
For Favela, Velasco is a case study in the ongoing influence of colonialism in Mexican art and goes as far back as the 16th century: art by natives was deemed folk art, while European works were considered fine art. In the case of Velasco, while he was Mexican, his art was celebrated because he was trained by an Italian master. His resulting Mexico landscapes were therefore highly romantic in the European tradition.
“Mexicans are given very temporary spaces to occupy in the art world. That might have to do with the materials we use, but this, frankly, is a double standard. There are Picasso’s on cardboard hanging in galleries, why not piñata?” Favela said.
A complicated and scarce history
Piñatas are synonymous with Mexico, but its origins lie elsewhere and have always melted into the culture of other countries and regions, said Maria Camba, a Spanish PhD candidate and a piñata maker herself researching the cultural and historic value of the object.
Camba travelled to Mexico and found the history of the piñata was scarcely documented. “That was a PhD right there,” she chuckles, “it’s a strange thing – there is little literature, but we know they are extremely popular objects because of their ability to generate festivity and rites of passage.”
In ancient China, a tradition existed of putting seeds in clay pots in the shape of an ox and smashing it during New Years to herald good fortune for the growing season. A common belief is that the Venetian explorer, Marco Polo, brought the concept to Italy in the early Middle Ages, but Camba’s research suggests that something like piñatas were already used in parts of Europe.
“Mostly in Italy, there was already piñata-type objects which held a sort of pagan importance,” Camba says. “In the middle ages, we can guess there was hybridization with the Chinese tradition, and it also moved from being associated with paganism to christianity. You see it in Italy, where a ‘pignatta’ would be smashed to close out the annual carnivale right before Lent to let out sweet foods.”
This type of piñata crossed borders and found reception in France, Holland, Belgium, Portugal and, above all, Spain. When the Spanish missionaries arrived in Latin America, they brought the tradition with them, this time covering clay pots with colorful paper.
“It was used by the Spanish in the early Evangelization of Mexico, to attract them would be faithful among the indigenous populations with something colorful and something they might understand,” Camba says. It worked because indigenous Mayas and Aztecs already used piñata-type objects to worship deities.
In Mexico, the piñata took on the form of a spherical clay pot adorned with colorful paper with seven pointed cones (representing the seven deadly sins). “It represents Satan wearing an attractive mask (the colorful paper) to cast a spell on humanity. The idea is that you smash it to restore good to the world,” Camba says.
As it took hold in Mexican culture, it gradually lost its religious bearings and soon spread to other celebrations and took on new forms. As it gained momentum, it became consigned to the world of pop art. Simultaneously, in Europe, the piñata was diminished, thanks to the Spanish civil war and the world wars which weakened the rituals where piñata once took centre stage.
“Piñata has this incredibly complicated history – with a very deep European tradition that often gets glossed over,” Camba says.
It’s a sentiment that’s shared by Benavidez.
“It’s why I wanted to remind people of the religious and European element in the Bosch works. I often wonder if more people knew of this history if that would make a difference in the respect piñata gets in art circles,” he said.
Provocative piñata
For Diana Benavidez (no relation to Roberto Benavidez), piñata is a means to bring people’s attention to important social and political issues affecting Latino communities. The San Diego-based artist recently exhibited her works alongside Favela and Roberto Benavidez in an LA exhibition celebrating piñata artists in the western US.
“We all had something different to say,” Benavidez said, “For me, I was interested in using piñata to provoke conversations, the difficult ones that people don’t want to have. I’m not really interested in the cliché smash it open at a party piñata; mine are political.”
Benavidez, a Mexican American woman, grew up along the US-Mexico border, shuttling between Chula Vista, California, and Tijuana. On the trips through the border, she remembers piñatas sold by vendors jostling next to the car.
As a young adult, she started a visual arts degree and when it came time to decide on a medium, she felt drawn to the piñata after reflecting on the object’s quiet but potent influence on her childhood at the border.
A recent series, Text me when you get home, is a collection in the shape of objects that women carry to defend themselves should they be attacked. It was inspired by Benevidez’s own assault that occurred in broad daylight. The piñatas include a large can of pepper spray, a rape whistle, a jangle of keys, and a broken one that reads, “She was asking for it”.
“It’s 2022, but there is an epidemic of violence against women in this country, especially colored and Latin women,” she says. “Not much gets done, so we do what we can to protect ourselves.”
The series, she says, was inspired not just by her own experience but from the horror she says is unfolding across the continent. Indeed, in the US, the number of missing Black and Latina women has spiked in recent years, while gender-based violence along the Mexican border has been described as a femicide.
“It’s uncomfortable, isn’t it?” Benavidez said, showing some piñatas from the series and some new works that focus on the border crisis.
There is a disconnection between the happy colors, the idea that there should be sweet treats inside, and the deeper message of the work.
“We’ve got to keep challenging the piñata stereotype,” Benavidez said. “That’s not to say we shouldn’t smash one and have fun at a party, but if we (artists) show anything, it’s that piñata is so much more.”