{"id":3374,"date":"2025-04-08T14:44:28","date_gmt":"2025-04-08T14:44:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/04\/08\/frieda-toranzo-jaeger-challenges-the-ideologies-of-late-capitalism\/"},"modified":"2025-04-08T14:44:30","modified_gmt":"2025-04-08T14:44:30","slug":"frieda-toranzo-jaeger-challenges-the-ideologies-of-late-capitalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/04\/08\/frieda-toranzo-jaeger-challenges-the-ideologies-of-late-capitalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Frieda Toranzo Jaeger Challenges The Ideologies of Late Capitalism"},"content":{"rendered":"
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An installation view of \u201cFrieda Toranzo Jaeger, Impersonal Unity Tools\u201d at Bortolami. Image courtesy the artist and Bortolami, New York \/ Photography by Guang Xu<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Materials, media and their modes of presentation are inherently embedded with political and cultural values shaped by traditions and ideologies that have accumulated over time. These values are, in turn, infused within the systems of production and circulation in which such materials and media participate. The choice of materials, the techniques employed in their creation and the platforms through which they are disseminated all carry implicit meanings, reflecting the power structures, social norms and cultural biases of their contexts. At the same time, the dynamic interplay between these embedded values and the interpretive lens of the audience creates a complex and multi-layered system of meaning-making in art and creation.<\/p>\n

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It is precisely this political and philosophical intersection\u2014between materials, embedded ideologies and systems of production\u2014that Mexican artist Frieda Toranzo Jaeger<\/a> investigates in her work, which has swiftly captured the attention of the international art world, particularly following her inclusion in the most recent Venice Biennale. Refusing the traditional canon and extending the canvas into three-dimensional space, Toranzo Jaeger\u2019s painting compositions evolve into elaborated tableaux and cabinet-like structures, where form and content function in tandem to express philosophical propositions.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe content and form are meant to challenge the Western idea of painting, to challenge the canon,\u201d the artist told Observer following the opening of her debut show with Bortolami in New York. For Toranzo Jaeger, the objective is to allow painting to perform itself. \u201cI want to create paintings that cannot be reduced to a single image and instead necessitate many images to be understood,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n

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Frieda Toranzo Jaeger. Hugo Enrique Nunez Chapital<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Every choice the artist makes in her multimedia orchestrations is rooted in deliberate political intent. Through her work, Toranzo Jaeger engages in a pointed critique of the systems of production and circulation that define late-stage capitalism, investigating how these frameworks influence human behavior and the societal structures they shape. At the core of her practice is a sustained inquiry into what she describes as the \u201cpsychological space of capitalism.\u201d<\/p>\n

In keeping with this critique, her work often adopts a more traditionally masculine vocabulary drawn from mechanics, automotive engineering and lifestyle culture. These elements are cleverly juxtaposed with anatomical references, drawing visual parallels between the human body and artificial vehicle parts. But she complicates the narrative further by integrating delicate embroidered interventions\u2014an artisanal, feminine touch that softens and enriches the surface. For her, masculinity and femininity are not oppositional but interdependent dialectics. \u201cIn lieu of relying on concrete definitions, I think of gender as being in a perpetual state of becoming,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

From this, it becomes clear that Frieda Toranzo Jaeger\u2019s aesthetic is, first and foremost, an act of resilience and self-affirmation\u2014one that challenges fixed ideologies and binary definitions. \u201cMy resistance and strength stem from rage\u2026 rage from the rise of fascism, genocide, war, inequality, class struggle, just to name a few, and I think that translates inevitably to my work,\u201d she said. Her paintings are ultimately an invitation \u201cto take control, to take power, to experience living\u201d at the extremes, in spaces where existence breaks free from the logic of production and consumption and asserts its full creative force.<\/p>\n

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The ten new works in Toranzo Jaeger\u2019s exhibition invite us to seek strategies for our collective liberation. Image courtesy the artist and Bortolami, New York \/ Photography by Guang Xu<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Recurrent throughout Toranzo Jaeger\u2019s work is the tension between humans and machines\u2014a friction between the drive for efficiency, productivity and profit and the impulse toward expansive, spontaneous creative expression. That tension takes on new urgency in her latest works, which incorporate a wide array of tools. \u201cI explore the integration of \u2018the machine\u2019 as an ontological agent into the construction of human subjectivity,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Pointing to a large heart-shaped canvas positioned at the center of the gallery, Toranzo Jaeger told us that the work functions as a stand-in for all machines rather than representing a specific one. \u201cIt is a projected screen, a multi-dimensional site like social media, selfies, stories, A.I., where our subjective desires are returned to us only after they are processed by technology.\u201d In her view, we increasingly become what the machine filters and feeds back to us. \u201cTechnology will disempower us slowly, using misinformation and fake news and demanding that we construct our beliefs based on these falsities. This painting is about surrendering to the machine, becoming one with the apparatus.\u201d By contrast, the paintings of tools throughout the exhibition suggest the possibility of resistance and repair. \u201cIn order to prevent collapse, you have to first believe in the possibility of its avoidance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several works appear to directly address humanity\u2019s ambition to dominate the planet, the sky and even the cosmos. But unlike the modernist tradition that so often glorified technological progress, Toranzo Jaeger\u2019s paintings interrogate that myth from the inside out. \u201cIt\u2019s all about the idea that our collective psychological space is created by the systems under which we live,\u201d she clarified. \u201cBy understanding these systems, we regain agency, but we also understand our limitations.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The surfaces of these polyptychs are densely layered with traditional Mexican embroidery paired with imagery culled from the briefer history of Western fine art. Image courtesy the artist and Bortolami, New York \/ Photography by Guang Xu<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To truly contend with the \u201cpsychological space of capitalism,\u201d Toranzo Jaeger argues, we must confront the legacy of colonization and its ongoing effects. We must also ask\u2014and answer\u2014the question \u201cWhat is fascism?\u201d as it shifts in form. Without that understanding, we remain lost in a landscape we do not recognize. And in this sense, she explains, her paintings act as political prompts\u2014tools for collective critical liberation. \u201cThey are embedded with questions about where power goes and how it operates. Our contemporary reality is particularly complex, as it is increasingly difficult to track ideologies, as they collapse into one another to substantiate power.\u201d<\/p>\n

The automobile, a recurring subject in her work, stands as a metaphor for navigating the lived experience of \u201cqueer people, people of color, within a system that rejects them.\u201d For Toranzo Jaeger, the car is both capitalism\u2019s ultimate vehicle\u2014a mechanism of time\/space distortion\u2014and a contradictory hybrid of exteriority and interiority.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the artist\u2019s use of the traditional polyptych format links her work to a deeper interrogation of religious iconography and ideology\u2014specifically as a reaction to the enduring influence of Catholicism in Mexico, a belief system inherited from the country\u2019s colonial past. Three \u2018toolbox\u2019 paintings in the show pay direct homage to the Catholic altarpieces of 14th- and 15th-century Italy, once used as portable tools of devotion. In Toranzo Jaeger\u2019s version, the instruments housed inside these painted \u201caltars\u201d become symbols and prompts for a much-needed spiritual and critical repair of a society still enthralled by hollow narratives of supposed progress and self-improvement.<\/p>\n

Still, as the title of the exhibition \u201cImpersonal Unity Tools\u201d makes plain, Toranzo Jaeger resists using autobiography to justify or anchor her practice. \u201cI\u2019m invested instead in universal liberation,\u201d she said. \u201cGods were the first concepts created, and religions, the systems generated to make sense of them.\u201d Paintings, she continues, were among the earliest tools in that education. Her goal is to develop paintings whose epistemological value can be understood universally\u2014even as they directly challenge the ideologies those early images once served.<\/p>\n

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Three \u2018toolbox\u2019 paintings pay homage to the Catholic altars of 14th- and 15th-century Italy. Image courtesy the artist and Bortolami, New York \/ Photography by Guang Xu<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Seen through this lens, the connection between Toranzo Jaeger\u2019s practice and Mexico\u2019s long tradition of Muralism comes into sharper focus. She considers Muralism one of the most revolutionary artistic movements of the 20th Century. \u201cAnd why is that? Because it was one of the few movements actually invested in its ideological effectiveness,\u201d she told Observer. \u201cBy literally taking art outside the museums, galleries and institutions, the artists gave art directly to the people. This effectively dismantled, or at least circumvented, the bourgeois ideology that controls what can and cannot be seen\u2014the system which has prevented all other artistic movements from affecting the material reality of its time.\u201d Deemed too politically dangerous, the artists behind the movement were ultimately shut out by the government, and the Muralist project faded. Still, for Toranzo Jaeger, the legacy of Muralism stands as a powerful reminder of what art can do, and it remains deeply embedded in her own revolutionary practice.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Frieda Toranzo Jaeger\u2019s exhibition at Bortolami issues a call for resilience and resistance in the face of pre-established ideologies, invoking a mode of creative expression and critical thinking capable of challenging arbitrary systems of value and envisioning a freer society. While technology threatens to disempower us gradually\u2014via misinformation, fake news and the pressure to construct our beliefs around fabricated narratives\u2014Toranzo Jaeger stakes out, through the aesthetics of handcraft, a defiant counterpoint to accelerating forces of erasure.<\/p>\n

Frieda Toranzo Jaeger\u2019s \u201cImpersonal Unity Tools<\/a>\u201d is on view at Bortolami, New York, through April 26, 2025.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

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