Emmanuel Ortega

Emmanuel Ortega (he/him) is Assistant Professor in Art of the Spanish Americas in the Department of Art History at the University of Illinois Chicago, where he has taught since 2018. He specializes in the visual and material cultures of Mexico across the Spanish colonial period into the nineteenth century. Ortega has written and lectured nationally and internationally on Mexican landscape painting, and Novohispanic Franciscan martyr paintings. In addition to his scholarly research, he is an active curator who has organized exhibitions in both Mexico and the United States. His most recent exhibition, Contemporary Ex-Votos: Devotion Beyond Medium, opened at the New Mexico State University Art Museum in 2022 and traveled to Chicago and Las Vegas, NV between 2023–24.

His first book, Visualizing Franciscan Anxiety and the Distortion of Native Resistance: The Domesticating Mission (Routledge, forthcoming 2027), centers the artistic production of the Franciscan religious order in colonial Mexico. Employing an innovative revisionist framework, the book examines Franciscan literary chronicles, engravings, maps, mural painting, martyr portraits, and mission architecture to deconstruct the traditional historiographic narrative of Franciscan innocence. The book reveals the enduring impact of Franciscan complicity with imperial authorities, throwing into question the benign intentions of their spiritual interventions across the Americas. Methodologically, the book mines the historical silences around Native resistance and the period’s artistic production, demonstrating how Indigenous challenges to colonization often went unnamed but nonetheless exerted explicit political power and incited administrative anxiety. By focusing on the “edges” of the Spanish Empire—stretching from the nomadic frontiers of la Gran Chichimeca to what eventually became the highly contested U.S. Southwest—the book disrupts traditional center-periphery narratives, offering a nuanced analysis of provincial practices that have been marginalized by a historic focus on colonial capitals like Mexico City.

Courses Taught:

Undergraduate Courses
AH180 Introduction to Museum and Exhibition Art History
AH302 Museum and Exhibition Workshop
AH208 Survey of Mexican Painting: From Teotihuacan to Modernism
AH263 Latin American Colonial Art
AH 208 The Visual Culture of Mexican Corridos

Graduate Seminars
AH562 The Art of Sentimentality
AH562 Locating Empire: Landscape Representation and Empire Building
AH 562 The Art of Native Resistance

Scholarly Publications

• “Beyond European Palettes: The Overlooked Contributions of Indigenized Artists in the Historiography of Painting in Mexico.” In The Routledge Companion to Art and Empire: Imperialism and Aesthetic Practices, 1800-1950, edited by Emily Burns and Alice M. Rudy Price, 100–16. Routledge, 2025. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003414742. [PDF]
• “The Mexican Picturesque and the Sentimental Nation: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Landscape.” The Art Bulletin 103, no.2 (June 2021): 129–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/00043079.2021.1847587. [PDF]
• “Consuming the Host: The Materiality of Franciscan Anxiety in Eighteenth-Century New Spain.” In Materiality: Making Spanish America, edited Jorge F. Rivas Perez, 119–129. Mayer Center for Ancient and Latin American Art at the Denver Art Museum, 2020. [PDF]
• “Spanish Colonial Art History and the Work of Empire.” In “Addressing Diversity and Inclusion in Latin American and Latinx Art History.” Special issue of Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture 1, no. 3 (2019): 83–86. https://doi.org/10.1525/lavc.2019.130006c. [PDF]

Artist Profiles and Exhibition Contributions

• “Creating from a Place of UN/Belonging: The MexiCali Bienal and Art at the Edges of Empire.” In MexiCali Biennial, Art, Actions, Exchanges since 2006, edited by Ed Gomez and Rosalía Romero. MexiCali Biennial and The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture, 2026. [PDF]
• “Sounding the Space of Un/Belonging,” essay for Recovecos: Angélica Negrón & Lido Pimienta, Green Umbrella New Music series, Los Angeles Philharmonic, 2025. [Link]
• “Sensorial Spectacles of Subjugation: Franciscan Autos Sacramentales in the Work of Adela Goldbard.” In Rebellion in an Other Mexico: The Last Judgement, edited by Adela Goldbard, 258–269. UIC Gallery 400, Universidad Iberoamericana, 2023. [PDF]
• “’It’s Piñata Paper!’: Justin Favelas’ Installations and the Fantasy of ‘Others.’” In Justin Favela: Fantasía/Fantasy, A Decade of Practice 2011–2021, edited by Jimmy Van Luu, Ryan Menefee with Edith Valle. Riso, Riso, 2023. [Book]
• “Review of Yvette Mayorga’s ‘What a Time to be.’” Hyperallergic. February, 27, 2023. [PDF]
• “The Sentimental Fantasy of Miscegenation: La Malinche in the Popular Mexican Imaginary.” In Traitor, Icon, Survivor: La Legacy of La Malinche, edited by Victoria I. Lyall and Terezita Romo, 122–132. Denver Art Museum and Yale University Press, 2022. [PDF]
• “Between Expectation and Realism: Luanne Redeye and the Everyday.” In This is Home: Recent Paintings by Luanne Redeye. The School of Art Collection and Galleries at Kent State University, 2022. [PDF]

Public Humanities

• “[VIDEO] El Señor del Sacromonte: Devotion Across Centuries.” Smarthistory. Spring 2023.
• “[VIDEO] The All-Powerful Hand and Private Devotion in Mexico.” Smarthistory. Fall 2022.

PhD, Art History, University of New Mexico
M.A., Art History, University of New Mexico
B.A., Art History, University of Las Vegas Nevada

Contemporary Ex-Votos: Devotion Beyond Medium

Contemporary Ex-Votos: Devotion Beyond Medium, is the first exhibition to pair 19th–20th century retablos from the NMSU Permanent Art Collection with thirteen commissioned works by contemporary Latinx artists. Guest curated by Dr. Emmanuel Ortega, Marilynn Thoma Scholar and Assistant Professor in Art of the Spanish Americas at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), this exhibition sheds light on the understudied iconographic and ideological aspects of ex-votos, a type of retablo (small devotional painting) depicting miracles painted on tin and found materials.

Artists include: Justin Favela, Eric J. García, Francisco Guevara, Dan45 Hernandez, Juan Molina Hernández, John Jota Leaños, Guadalupe Maravilla, Yvette Mayorga, Daisy Quezada Ureña, Krystal Ramirez, Sandy Rodriguez, Xochi Solis, and José Villalobos. [Read more]

PRESS:

• Gabriela Rodriguez, “‘Contemporary Ex-Votos’ Mixes Latinx Tradition with Modern Artistry at The Barrick Museum.” Las Vegas Weekly, April 25, 2024.
• Coco Picard, “Dr. Emmanuel Ortega on Re-Defining Ex-Votos,” Chicago Reader, February 28, 2024.
• Lori Waxman, “An exhibition about devotion, galleries at UIC become its churches.” Chicago Tribune, February 22, 2024.
•  Charles Venkatesh Young, “Tradition Made Anew: A Review of ‘Contemporary Ex-Votos’ at Gallery 400,” New Art City, February 16, 2024.
•  Cristobal Alday, “History repeats itself,” Chicago Reader, January 29, 2024.
• Joy Miller, “Country’s Largest Mexican Retablo Collection, Once Stored Underneath Bleachers, is Paired with Contemporary Devotional Works,” Southwest Contemporary, October 18, 2022.
• Edgar Picazo Merino, “A Contemporary Look at Devotion,” Hyperallergic, November 9, 2022.