Low Res: Selected Works 2006-2016 by Jaque Fragua

“Fragua’s visions manifest as full-bodied sensory experiences that engage the eyes, heart, and mind. Generative of social change and oriented toward future dialogues, Fragua seeks to reawaken Native communities’ rights to assemble, self-determination, and freedom of speech, critical reminders of basic constitutional rights...

Rattling the cage is not enough for Fragua, who says, “You need a taser these days.” His lean, angular letters, bold color stories, and sardonic re-appropriations of conglomerate logos offer solutions — visual “reverse Uno cards” — for reconciling with the unequal ecological burdens Indigenous communities endure in the razing of our planet, and for triumphing over generations of inherited cultural traumas. Fragua’s interventions penetrate the public sphere — moving us, shifting us, and urging us all to stand up and answer back.”

“This is the power of Jaque’s work, and this is very present in this volume. No one can lay claim to symbols, especially those depicting Native Peoples as a pejorative. His work that contains such symbols begs the question, “Why not fuck those images up and appropriate them for the Other?” in a reflective nature, the same way the swastika is an inverse of the Whirling Logs, not the other way around. Some symbols are older than what we consider “modern” society and Jaque’s work pays homage to that. Inside or out, Jaque’s work escapes boundaries and binaries of right vs. wrong; they lean more towards the spectrum of truth vs. lie. His work calls out the devious and mean-spirited, in a trickster play against it. In Greek mythology, Perseus killed Medusa by showing evil it’s own reflection, the fight for the morality of humans versus others that act godlike demands a certain Perseus character. Jaque is no demigod, he is a guy from Jemez, amongst other places; his work, on the other hand, acts as Perseus’s shield did. As the tool to conquer human atrocities. I would liken Jaque and his work to less of a Grecian myth and more to those of the Native tricksters, spreading morality through their own actions.”