In recent years, artists have been drawn toward reinventions of the traditional Mexican lotería game. In San Antonio alone, Cristina Sosa Noriega created a series of 54 personalized My Loteria paintings, author Xelena González created a set of Lotería Remedios oracle cards for a national publisher, and the MujerArtes Women’s Clay Cooperative made 54 hand-painted ceramic lotería tiles honoring the city’s West Side.
A new exhibition at Centro de Artes, Millennial Lotería: The LatinXperience, collects the work of Mike Alfaro and Gerardo Guillén, the Los Angeles creative directors behind the popular “artistic parody of the Hispanic tradition of Lotería,” as described in an announcement by the Department of Arts and Culture.
A modern dama
A timeline in the show recounts the 35-year-old Alfaro’s initial inspiration for the first Millennial Lotería set, when in 2017 he visited family in his native Guatemala and encountered a vintage set of cards. The La Dama card felt stereotypical and out of place against the backdrop of the 2017 Women’s March the day after Donald Trump was inaugurated.
Alfaro created an updated version of La Dama titled La Feminist, a lotería-themed illustration depicting a smartly dressed woman holding a protest sign, and posted it to social media. The idea struck a chord, he said, and ideas for more reworked cards materialized.
“I realized I could connect this traditional lotería to a more modern interpretation that reflected what me and my friends and people in my generation were going through,” Alfaro said during a Thursday morning walkthrough of the exhibition.
He thought of El Student Debt to parody El Mundo, an Atlas figure shouldering the world, because so much of his generation is weighed down repaying student loans. His version of La Escalera, which depicts a ladder, is El Border Wall which positions the ladder against a wall to depict the experience of immigrants like himself.
“A lot of things from the game were created from me just having this feeling of not being represented in the media, not being seen, our stories not being told,” Alfaro said.
The exhibition collects prints of 270 card designs, displayed in groups according to each themed set. A display case at the entrance holds examples of each set released so far, including a tarot deck and a silvery “La Shiny AF Edition” of the original set.
Updated nostalgia
Being “seen” is important to his generation, which grew up with social media as an ever-present phenomenon, allowing connection more or less directly without the filter of traditional media.
Alfaro defines being seen as “about finding a community of people who relate to you.” The original lotería cards reflect his grandparents’ generation, he said, and young Latinos “want to see their generation in something cool and something modern and fresh,” which accounts for the popularity of Millennial Lotería.
Nostalgia is big among millennials, he said, looking back to what made prior decades cool while also acknowledging that times have changed.
The first edition has been joined by multiple editions, one specifically geared toward the turn of the century Y2K, and another toward Gen Z. The ever-popular McDonald’s fast food chain caught on and commissioned a set, followed by collaborations with Disney and Warner Bros. Pictures.
As Alfaro and Guillen age, they update with new sets, the latest being an El Mid-Life Crisis expansion pack with new cards reflecting his new life situation, including having a baby and changing diapers.
With hundreds of thousands of followers on social media, Alfaro said he feels the sense of connection he yearned for as an immigrant at age 18 has been achieved.
“When I came to United States, I felt very alone. I’m a foreigner in this country,” he said. “I remember walking into Target and feeling like this is another world … very different than the mercado I used to go to when I was younger.”
And now, he said, “my game is [sold] at Target,” and young Latinos like him will see themselves reflected on the store’s shelves.
Millennial Lotería: The LatinXperience is on view at Centro de Artes through June 30, in tandem with an exhibition by Oaxacan artist Efedefroy. Admission is free.
