A critical-embodied phenomenology of Mestizo identity: Corporeality in the ecology of Mexican Muralism

Navarro Arroyo, Mariano; Briedis, Mindaugas

doi:10.1386/eme_00259_1

A critical-embodied phenomenology of Mestizo identity: Corporeality in the ecology of Mexican Muralism

Journal

Explorations in Media Ecology

ISSN

1539-7785

2048-0717

Publisher

Intellect

Date Issued

2025-09-01

Author(s)

Type

text::journal::journal article

DOI

10.1386/eme_00259_1

URL

https://scripta.up.edu.mx/handle/20.500.12552/12646

Abstract

In this article, we consider Mexican Muralism, specifically the works of Diego Rivera, as a prominent manifestation of artistic media ecologies that provide affordances for conversations and interactions which amplify social beliefs and turn subjective judgements into intersubjective reality. We analyse this reality from the perspectives of embodied cognition and critical phenomenology. We use this conceptual apparatus to examine the genesis of mestizo identity in the specific medium of Mexican Muralism. We aim to clarify the particular lived experience of the mestizo subaltern condition and its relation to the origins of mestizo subjectivity. This article argues that Rivera’s murals, understood through a framework of critical phenomenology and media ecology, offer embodied, spatial strategies that disrupt colonized forms of perception and imagination, thereby contributing to a reconfiguration of subjectivity. Moreover, we examine how visible markers of social identity – such as gender, race and class – are mediated by murals and thus inform the personal awareness and experience of inequality.