PULP.MICRO.META. Mini-Comics aus einem neokolonialen Mexiko

In the organizer's words:

ARTISTS

Floresrosx / Poni Alta | Iurhi Peña | Salvador Jacobo

In the second half of the 20th century, Mexico experienced a boom in comic production. The so-called historietas - graphic stories in booklet format - shaped the everyday lives of entire generations. They dealt with themes such as adventure, romance, horror and westerns and were heavily influenced by US models. Pulp - cheaply produced entertainment booklets that were printed on coarse wood pulp paper in the USA from the end of the 19th century - catered to a mass audience with garish covers and lurid stories. Their visual language - exaggerated bodies, dramatic poses, half-naked women and heroic savior figures - also had a lasting impact on the imagery of Mexican historietas.

In the microcuentos, small-format mini-comics from the 1950s to 1970s, this aesthetic is combined with local narrative traditions, founding myths and colonial images of history. In addition to their cultural and educational significance, they also conveyed subtle social and political commentary. While at first glance the stories tell of adventure and romance, they reflect deeply rooted colonial narratives that shape the collective memory.

The exhibition sheds light on the central settings of these narratives - such as the jungle or the "Wild West" - and asks how they contributed to the formation of a colonially coded visual language that continues to have an impact today.

PULP.MICRO.META. examines this specific form of visual storytelling:

- PULP stands for the iconic visual language of US pulp magazines - with their sensationalized motifs and sexualized depictions of the body.

- MICRO refers to the small magazine format of the microcuentos.

- META describes the reflection on the medium of comics as a mirror of colonial, social and gender-political power relations.

On display are original issues, cover artworks, sketches and interviews from the Microcuentos archive. Contemporary artistic positions by the Mexican comic artists Iurhi Peña, Floresrosx/Poni Alta and Salvador Jacobo complement the archive material and intervene directly in the exhibition space. Their works comment on the historical narrative patterns and develop new graphic strategies to respond to the forms of discrimination anchored in images and text.

The transatlantic cooperation project between Schwarzenberg e.V., Rice University in Houston (curator: Christoph Sperandio) and the Mexican author and curator Oscar G. Hernández uses the example of the Microcuentos to ask how colonial imagery continues to have an effect in comics today - and how its global development is linked to colonial and postcolonial patterns of thought and representation.

In addition, the exhibition draws a line to the GDR comic series Die Digedags, which was told with an anti-colonial claim, but also reproduced racist stereotypes - for example in the issue Landing in Mexico.

PULP.MICRO.META. thus opens up a view of a chapter in comic history that has received little attention to date - and shows how subversive graphic storytelling can become an important tool for decolonial knowledge production.