ALFONSO CANSECO PELIGRO:
A FOLK ARTIST WHO CROSSES
BOUNDARIES AND DISCIPLINES
FOFA met Alfonso Canseco Peligro (Pérez) when he participated in FOFA-MEAPO’s fourth contest for young artists in 2016, winning honorable mention with his whimsical “Ferris Wheel” constructed of bamboo and corn husk, sewn together with mesquite tree resin thread. Now 35 years old and a winner of many awards, he lives and works in his hometown of San Antonino Castillo Velasco.
Alfonso in 2021 at Footprint of the Coyote (Huella de Coyote), his workshop/gallery which he founded in 2017. To his right is the Ferris Wheel (Rueda de la Fortuna) he entered in the 2016 FOFA competition.

Alfonso Canseco Peligro is a multifaceted artist deeply rooted in the folk art traditions of his region. As a child, he helped his parents sow, harvest and dry flowers for the town’s booming dried flower industry. He taught himself how to work with the artisanal materials of his region: dried flowers, vegetable fibers, reeds, palm, and cornhusk. There was no art instruction in the town’s school, but fortunately a high school teacher encouraged him to apply to the School of Fine Arts at Benito Juárez Autonomous University of Oaxaca. That’s where he adopted the nickname “Peligro” (Danger) in art school as tribute to a Pérez family story.

Since graduating from art school more than a decade ago he has expanded and deepened his range of artistic expression, especially in printmaking: woodcut printing, linoleum cutting and metal engraving. He also paints. Although he has been told that his printmaking straddles a world between folk art and fine art, he laments, “It should be a folk art. Every aspect of the technique is artisanal, and its roots are found in ancient culture. Our ancestors printed with carved rock, bone and wood over centuries, printing on their bodies for ceremonial and martial reasons, and on walls for decorative reasons.”
A Good Harvest, Thank God (Buena cosecha gracias a Dios). Linoleum cut, 2019.

Woodcut printing in Mexico goes back to the 16th century, introduced by Spanish monks to portray Christian imagery. The pioneer of Mexican lithography (etching on metal as opposed to raised carved blocks) was José Guadalupe Posada (1851-1913), who drew skeleton figures to illustrate the social and political issues of the day, romance, and Day of the Dead rituals. In the 1930s, the printmakers of the famous art collective Taller de Gráfica Popular (Popular Graphics Workshop) produced a remarkable array of prints to address the plight of the poor, spreading political messages to an illiterate populace inexpensively through mass reproduction.
For FOFA’s COVID art project, Alfonso submitted the poster he had created for his community to encourage young people to wear a mask. It reads, “Think you look cool not wearing a mask in the street? You decide where to be!” (i.e., in a grave or a house).
Alfonso uses his ample skills to show many aspects of daily Oaxacan life, in particular the celebration of corn, so important in his small town 25 miles south of Oaxaca City. He comments, “I see a relation between preparing the earth for corn and preparing a print run of my woodcuts. In each you have to plan carefully, prepare the surface on which you will work, proceed with patience and respect for the materials, work intentionally and wait for the right moment to harvest.”
 
Most of his pieces show elements of daily life or local customs, some revealing his wry sense of humor, such as his tribute to the Virgin of Guadalupe holding a slingshot in her hand, or his profile of a neighbor who enjoys tippling in the corn fields as he sells his homemade corn-based alcoholic tejate beverage.
Protect Us, Mother (Protegenos madre), woodcut, 2017; and The Burro of the Crown (El burro de la corona) woodcut, 2019.


Prize Winner in Many Artistic Modalities
Moctezuma the Immortal (Moctezuma el inmortal), dried flowers and vegetable fibers, 2014, Honorable Mention, Benito Juárez competition, currently on display at the Oaxacan Philatelic Museum, MUFI
 
As an art student he won first prize in a national competition for work with vegetable fibers. Since then, he has won a regional or national prize every year in one category or another; his woodcut prints were selected to represent Mexico at a Latin American printing competition in 2019.
In 2019 Alfonso’s linoleum cut Underworld (El palenque de Mictlán) was chosen to represent Mexico in the Latin American Small Print competition.

In December 2019 Alfonso won first prize in the dried flower category at Oaxaca’s annual “Night of the Radish” folk art competition with a huge installation, an homage to the great Zapotec artist Francisco Toledo, who had died several months earlier. The tableau is composed of various organic materials, showcasing his parents’ dried flowers, and is rich in significance. In one hand Toledo holds a corn cob, referencing his activist campaign against genetically modified corn in Mexico; in the other hand he holds the strings to 43 kites, an echo of Toledo’s exhibition marking the 2014 disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa students in Guerrero. Toledo stands in front of the Centro de los Artes de San Agustín, the innovative, robust art center he created from an abandoned textile factory in Oaxaca. In 2019 Alfonso was a member of the fifth graduating class in the Center’s program for environmentally friendly printing techniques, prior to Toledo’s death.
Alfonso’s homage to the master Oaxacan painter and cultural activist Francisco Toledo, Immortal Work, Struggle and Legacy of Master Toledo (Inmortal Obra, Lucha y Legado del Maestro Toledo), earned first prize in the dried flowers category at the 2019 Night of the Radish folk art celebration in Oaxaca.
 
Generosity with Students and His Community
Teaching primary school children in Ocotlán de Morelos about the traditions and possibilities of folk art from dried organic materials, the week before the COVID shutdown, March 2020.

Alfonso launched his own workshop and gallery, Footprint of the Coyote, in 2017 in San Antonino with the idea of creating a community space where he could work, display and teach printing and other art techniques. COVID has limited his group lessons, but in the past year he has worked with individual students, and he offers his printing services at no cost for “noble causes,” as he puts it. In February, when a FOFA visitor stopped by, he was printing tee shirts for free for a student organization raising money to sterilize stray cats and dogs.

He is passionate about teaching the children of his town, who still have no art programs in their schools. "Genuine art, the art of our people, is an ancient heritage that must continue to be transmitted to new generations," he says.
Teaching an introduction to engraving, San Martín Tilcajete, June 2021.
 
FOFA members have high hopes for Alfonso and the other multi-talented artists who straddle disciplines and worlds within the arts community. COVID has made their lean existence even more difficult, but we are inspired by Alfonso’s energy and commitment to his community. “In my work I try to embody the strength of my people and the faith they have in the earth and their work. It’s a blessing from heaven to harvest what one’s hands sow.”
Caption: Coyote – lithograph, 2021
 
You can find Alfonso on Instagram and Facebook, where he posts lively videos of his engraving and printing process and celebrates other Mexican printers and artists. He is delighted to ship his prints to the United States, and packages larger ones in lightweight PVC plumbing pipes to protect them.
Dance of the Turkey (Bailando el guajolote) woodcut, 2018
Street dog, (Perro callejero), linoleum cut, 2017.
Please consider supporting FOFA's ongoing efforts to enable talented young Oaxacan folk artists to achieve their dreams and maintain sustainable livelihoods.

For a comprehensive look at FOFA's programs, visit our website at: www.fofa.us
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