Beach Drive’s beloved kapok tree has some new competition for the most popular photo op on the block. The Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg (225 Beach Drive NE) today unveiled ‘Magic Grasshopper’ on its front lawn, a 30-foot-long, pastry-pink sculpture of a horse-drawn carriage created by Chicago artist Yvette Mayorga.
It’s the kind of thing you have to see to truly grasp (that’s what the pictures are for), and even when you’re standing in front of the beautiful piece, there’s still so much to take in. It evokes ’90s nostalgia with the appearance of carousel horses in Hello Kitty backpacks, but the cutesy first impression belies the deeper meaning of the sculpture.
Beneath the smiley face flags and Sleeping Beauty-esque carriage lie themes of migration, feminized labor, and colonial histories. Look closely and you can see the details that make Mayorga’s piece “a tribute to the physical and personal journeys undertaken in pursuit of the American Dream.”
“The sculpture is elaborately piped in Mayorga’s signature faux-frosting: thickened acrylic applied through pastry bags, which references the artist’s familial labor of baking and the broader histories of women’s work and immigrant labor,” MFA explains. “The disarmingly sweet exterior and the color pink become a subversion, a sugary shield, and a portal to a hopeful future.
“The carriage itself looks prepared for a journey, with suitcases stacked on the roof, horses sporting Hello Kitty backpacks, and a smiley-face flag fluttering optimistically above. Tricked-out wheels with gold rims beneath the carriage serve as an homage to the lowrider culture rooted in Mexican-American communities of Chicago, where the artist is based.
“Wrapped around the carriage are painterly scenes of migration, layering European art historical tropes with personal and collective narratives.”
Magic Grasshopper on display in New York City. Photo via Times Square Arts
Mayorga refers to her distinctive artistic style as “Latinxoco,” a mix of Latinx and Rococo aesthetics. The carriage in Magic Grasshopper references the royal carriage of the Second Mexican Empire, which was modeled after the opulent coronation coach of Louis XVI at the Palace of Versailles, and was used at the Castillo de Chapultepec in Mexico City, a castle built atop sacred Aztec land. The title, Magic Grasshopper, refers to the English translation of the Nahuatl word Chapultepec (“hill of the grasshopper”), and “evokes a mythical vehicle able to transcend the constraints of space and time.”
Originally commissioned for and displayed in Times Square, the installation will remain in St. Pete through the summer in advance of the Mayorga’s upcoming Rococo-themed interior exhibition that will debut at the Museum of Fine Arts in June. Learn more about Magic Grasshopper and Mayorga here.