Times Square is about to get a sugar rush. Yvette Mayorga, the artist best known for her pink-hued, frosted confections, is unveiling her largest public artwork at the New York plaza—one that’s equal parts dreamy fairy tale and pointed social critique.
Come October, you won’t miss the maximalist Magic Grasshopper. The 30-feet sculpture is anchored by a pink Baroque carriage, its wheels tricked out with gold rims, being drawn by four carousel horses sporting Hello Kitty backpacks. A flag wearing a smiley face is planted on top of the vehicle. As with any Mayorga creation, the devil’s in the details: the work’s surfaces bear her elaborate faux frosting, created by piping acrylic through pastry bags.
For the Chicago-based artist, the sculpture mirrors the sheer scale and spectacle of New York’s hottest tourist destination. It’s a site of “overwhelming visual opulence, abundance, and commercial fantasy,” she told me, as much as a “transit space for everyday New Yorkers.”
“I want Magic Grasshopper to function at both of those levels: to catch the eye of a tourist with its scale and excess, but also to offer a moment of recognition, curiosity, or even joy for someone just passing by,” she said over email.
But Magic Grasshopper demands even closer inspection. A child of Mexican immigrants, Mayorga has long woven the Latinx experience with 18th-century Rococo aesthetics into a visual style she’s dubbed “Latinxcoco.” It’s a meeting that draws out colonial histories and invisible, often feminized, labor. Her signature piped frosting, for one, calls back to the labor of her mother, who worked as a baker in a departmental store in the 1970s after moving to the U.S.
Yvette Mayorga, (2020). Courtesy of the artist.
Mayorga’s horse-drawn carriage, then, invokes more than one kind of journey—not just one undertaken by fairy-tale princesses, but by immigrants in pursuit of the American Dream. Its low-sitting wheels nod to the low-rider culture that emerged from Chicago’s Mexican-American communities, while its body carried painted depictions of migration. Not for nothing does Mayorga describe the work as “both a time machine and a dream machine.”
The design of the coach itself also echoes the royal carriage of the Second Mexican Empire, which was modeled Louis XIV’s coronation coach and is currently housed at the Chapultepec Castle in Mexico. The Nahuatl word for Chapultepec, chapoltepēc, which translates to “hill of the grasshopper,” gives Mayorga’s sculpture its title.
“I reimagine that history as a form of futurist Indigenous resistance,” she explained, “and a pink carriage as a fantastical, border-crossing vessel.”
Installation view of “Yvette Mayorga: Dreaming of You” at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, 2023. Courtesy of the Aldrich.
Bubblegum pink, fantasy, dreams, and other flights of fancy, in fact, have been apt channels for Mayorga to unpack deeper meanings and themes. She describes them as “powerful tools,” appealing on the surface yet layered below.
“Everyone can identify beauty; it’s universal. I use that to create a seductive, sugar-coated invitation into a much deeper conversation,” she said. “Beneath the excess is always a story—one about beauty, survival, joy, migration, and memory. It’s about making space for those stories in places where they’re not always told.”
The work marks the newest commission from Times Square Arts, which has previously invited the likes of Thomas J Price, Laurie Simmons, and Marco Brambilla to leave their mark on the crossroads of the world. Mayorga’s mesmerizing entry, said the organization’s director Jean Cooney, isn’t just made for the place, but for the present.
Laurie Simmons’ Autofiction: Moving Pictures, Waiting and Looking Up. Photo: Michael Hull. Courtesy of Times Square Arts.
“Her work is so well-positioned for public consumption—an alluring sugary exterior and a tactility that immediately draws people in, as well as an unending depth and complexity for those who are willing to peel back the layers,” she told me over email. “The themes of immigration and colonial histories that Mayorga addresses in Magic Grasshopper have an enduring relevance, but are incredibly timely for this specific moment.”
Indeed, at a time when anti-immigration policies are roiling the country, Mayorga hopes migrants viewing the installation might see “a monument made with them in mind.”
“And for those who don’t share that experience, I hope Magic Grasshopper still opens a door into a layered narrative,” she said. “In a space like Times Square, where spectacle is the norm, I wanted to create a different kind of spectacle—one grounded in care, imagination, and power.”
Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com
