In contemporary visual culture, cuteness is often used as a disarming appearance—something that grabs attention, is broadly appealing, and quietly hides a harsh truth beneath its glossy surface. Fairy tales and toys such as dollhouses employ the same strategy as metaphorical devices to prepare children for the inequalities and power structures of adult life. This symbolic logic defines the visual vocabulary of Chicago artist Yvette Mayorga, who has just transformed Times Square with a Times Square Art Commission: a 30-foot-long dynamic pink carriage that seems to have rolled straight out of a fairy tale. Beneath its candy-colored exterior, adorned with Hello Kitty backpacks and gold lowrider trim, lies a more complex story that confronts U.S. immigration policy, female labor, and the shattered American dream.
This landmark work marks the culmination of two years of development, during which both Mayorga’s practice and American politics changed, making the project all the more poignant. The artist is a first-generation Mexican American whose family immigrated from the state of Jalisco, and this commission is not only a milestone in her career but also an important moment in the visibility of the community she represents. “It feels even more important to have a piece like this in Times Square because Times Square is a place with a lot of foot traffic from all over the world,” she told the Observer ahead of the unveiling.
“When I was asked to imagine a sculpture for this scene, I really wanted to think of Times Square as the ultimate symbolic place – the first place that many people think of when imagining America, especially New York. For visitors, it sits alongside other iconic American landmarks.” Mayorga sought to engage with this visibility and the dense commercial image that imbues contemporary American spaces and values.
Disguising her work in a candy-pink aesthetic, Mayorga transforms cuteness and innocence into clever visual traps—approachable, seductive, yet imbued with stories of the inequality and surveillance she experienced. Beneath the sweet surface lies diasporic trauma and commentary on the low-wage workforce in the U.S. Latino community.
Mayorga drew on her mother’s experience working as a baker and devised a unique technique: using a cake nozzle and a piping bag to sculpt acrylic paint. This process allowed her to incorporate her family’s stories into her art while addressing more broadly the conditions of working-class Latinas—who often perform backbreaking but poorly paid labor—through a method that both reflects and reimagines the art of candy work practiced by her mother and other immigrant women.
Fairy tales, especially carriages, evoke childhood memories and conjure up images of a more magical world, although for Mayorga they were no escape from reality. “It’s also a metaphor for life—happy and sad at the same time,” she reflects. “I’ve always been around that, and I’ve learned to accept it as a fact of life. Deviating from it makes us less human, right? Those things always happen at the same time.”
Sitting with grief recently—anticipated grief, collective grief, all of it—prompted her to engage in deeper introspection and cultivate a new maturity that now manifests and resonates in her work. At the same time, this archetypal and symbolic imagery transcends the present, reminding us that history is cyclical and that ghosts of the past can easily return as demons of the present if we fail to remain vigilant and allow memories to fade.
The image of a horse-drawn carriage has many meanings, but it first emerged when Mayorga learned that Times Square was a rallying point for horse-drawn carriages in its early days. Further inspiration came from 19th-century Mexican carriages from the First Empire that she encountered at Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City in 2018, their interiors decorated with Louis XVI decorative patterns. the title of the work, magic grasshoppera reference to Chapultepec (which means “on the grasshopper’s hill”) and draws attention to the place that was once an Aztec settlement but was later occupied. “By combining this history with a horse-drawn carriage carrying a carousel and a backpack, I wanted to imagine an object that could transcend space and time, tying together the history of decadence, colonial legacy, and Latino identity, while continuing to keep investigation and recycling at the center of my practice,” she explains.
At the core of Mayorga’s aesthetic is a concept she created, latin cocoaA fusion of Latin and Rococo styles – Versailles-inspired grandeur intertwined with Mexican symbolism and architecture. Her earliest exposure to the Baroque and Rococo styles came through Mexican iterations during childhood visits to her family’s hometown in Jalisco. As she recalls, she was particularly fascinated by the Spanish Rococo style that emerged in the late 17th and early 18th centuries and was later reinterpreted in Mexico. The purpose of this style was to overwhelm the viewer with dense decoration such as broken gables, undulating cornices, reverse volutes, balustrades, stucco shells and garlands. In Mexican hands, however, it developed further, its exuberance amplified and incorporated into local symbols, transforming an alien language of domination into a vibrant expression of cultural resistance.
This choice is undoubtedly a hint to the present. Just before the Collapse and Revolution, Rococo thrived in excess and opulence. Likewise, the United States today faces an alarmingly widening economic divide, with the disappearance of any middle ground deepening the divide between the extreme haves and have-nots—now across the globe. History has shown where this trajectory will lead.
Delivering such a message in Times Square—perhaps the ultimate symbol of America’s promise of prosperity through consumerism and media—only strengthens its edge. The carriage looks ready to embark on the so-called “American Dream”: trunks strapped to the roof, horses carrying Hello Kitty backpacks, and smiley-face flags flying with an almost absurd optimism. Beneath it, a gold-rimmed, ornate wheel turns slowly, paying homage to the lowrider culture rooted in Chicago’s Mexican-American community, where Mayorga’s family settled after immigrating from Jalisco and still live today. On the carriage’s body, painterly scenes of migration unfold, intertwining tropes from European art history with personal and collective narratives.
Yet Mayorga deliberately leaves interpretation open, creating a device that, like a fairy tale or cartoon, has meaning depending on who encounters it and how they interpret the changing landscape of today’s America.
At this stage of her career, after numerous public commissions and gallery and museum exhibitions, Mayorga is acutely aware of the assumptions her work evokes through its muted palette and seemingly innocent aesthetic. “I took that into consideration when I was creating because I knew there were so many different entry points,” she said. “Especially public work, that’s what excites me the most: not everyone who sees it is ‘well-versed’ in art history, but they can still experience it, and I hope it does something for them intuitively, that makes an impact in some way.”
For this committee, size itself is crucial. “Whether you’re commuting or visiting New York for the first time, this one is so massive it’s almost impossible to miss. I hope even a glimpse catches someone’s attention and brings a moment of joy—just a brief pause of color and fun in the middle of everything else going on.”
