Santo de mi devoción (Saint of My Devotion),

1982

In this self-portrait, Zenil focuses on the idea of human suffering—a principal theme of retablos and other Christian devotional images—as a means for personal reflection on Mexican society. Sealed within a decorative shrine, he appears as an anima sola, a lonely soul, engulfed in purgatory’s flames as if in punishment for his sins. Rather than beseech the heavens for redemption, as in traditional representations, he confronts the viewer, in formal dress and with a serious yet impassive expression. This image of dignified endurance, made by an openly gay artist, points to the church’s power to shape national identity and asks who is worthy to share in it.

The word retablo, from the Latin retro tabulum (behind the altar table), originally referred to devo-tional paintings in Catholic churches. In Mexico, reflecting traditions introduced to local cultures by Spanish conquest beginning in the sixteenth century, retablo came to denote a small oil painting on metal placed on the wall of a shrine or church dedicated to Christ, the Virgin, or saints to consecrate a miraculous event. The retablos on view were offered by Mexican migrants and their families throughout the twentieth century to commemorate the dangers of crossing the border to the United States. Filled with emotive detail, they eloquently express the subjects of greatest concern to the migrants, such as the difficulty of finding work or falling sick in a foreign land and the relief of returning home. Usually commissioned from local artists working anonymously, retablos feature first-person vignettes, dated and inscribed with the supplicants’ names, combined with representations of the miracle and holy images. As they accumulate on church walls, in both Mexico and the United States, these votive images become records of private faith, fears, and familial attachments. Retablos convey the complex and layered emotions embedded in migration across this political borderland.