Materials, media and their modes of presentation are inherently embedded with political and cultural values shaped by traditions and ideologies that have accumulated over time. These values are, in turn, infused within the systems of production and circulation in which such materials and media participate. The choice of materials, the techniques employed in their creation and the platforms through which they are disseminated all carry implicit meanings, reflecting the power structures, social norms and cultural biases of their contexts. At the same time, the dynamic interplay between these embedded values and the interpretive lens of the audience creates a complex and multi-layered system of meaning-making in art and creation.
It is precisely this political and philosophical intersection—between materials, embedded ideologies and systems of production—that Mexican artist Frieda Toranzo Jaeger investigates in her work, which has swiftly captured the attention of the international art world, particularly following her inclusion in the most recent Venice Biennale. Refusing the traditional canon and extending the canvas into three-dimensional space, Toranzo Jaeger’s painting compositions evolve into elaborated tableaux and cabinet-like structures, where form and content function in tandem to express philosophical propositions.
SEE ALSO: As Trump’s Tariffs Spark Global Trade Panic, Art Remains an Exception—at Least for Now
“The content and form are meant to challenge the Western idea of painting, to challenge the canon,” the artist told Observer following the opening of her debut show with Bortolami in New York. For Toranzo Jaeger, the objective is to allow painting to perform itself. “I want to create paintings that cannot be reduced to a single image and instead necessitate many images to be understood,” she explained.
Every choice the artist makes in her multimedia orchestrations is rooted in deliberate political intent. Through her work, Toranzo Jaeger engages in a pointed critique of the systems of production and circulation that define late-stage capitalism, investigating how these frameworks influence human behavior and the societal structures they shape. At the core of her practice is a sustained inquiry into what she describes as the “psychological space of capitalism.”
In keeping with this critique, her work often adopts a more traditionally masculine vocabulary drawn from mechanics, automotive engineering and lifestyle culture. These elements are cleverly juxtaposed with anatomical references, drawing visual parallels between the human body and artificial vehicle parts. But she complicates the narrative further by integrating delicate embroidered interventions—an artisanal, feminine touch that softens and enriches the surface. For her, masculinity and femininity are not oppositional but interdependent dialectics. “In lieu of relying on concrete definitions, I think of gender as being in a perpetual state of becoming,” she said.
From this, it becomes clear that Frieda Toranzo Jaeger’s aesthetic is, first and foremost, an act of resilience and self-affirmation—one that challenges fixed ideologies and binary definitions. “My resistance and strength stem from rage… rage from the rise of fascism, genocide, war, inequality, class struggle, just to name a few, and I think that translates inevitably to my work,” she said. Her paintings are ultimately an invitation “to take control, to take power, to experience living” at the extremes, in spaces where existence breaks free from the logic of production and consumption and asserts its full creative force.
Recurrent throughout Toranzo Jaeger’s work is the tension between humans and machines—a friction between the drive for efficiency, productivity and profit and the impulse toward expansive, spontaneous creative expression. That tension takes on new urgency in her latest works, which incorporate a wide array of tools. “I explore the integration of ‘the machine’ as an ontological agent into the construction of human subjectivity,” she said.
Pointing to a large heart-shaped canvas positioned at the center of the gallery, Toranzo Jaeger told us that the work functions as a stand-in for all machines rather than representing a specific one. “It is a projected screen, a multi-dimensional site like social media, selfies, stories, A.I., where our subjective desires are returned to us only after they are processed by technology.” In her view, we increasingly become what the machine filters and feeds back to us. “Technology will disempower us slowly, using misinformation and fake news and demanding that we construct our beliefs based on these falsities. This painting is about surrendering to the machine, becoming one with the apparatus.” By contrast, the paintings of tools throughout the exhibition suggest the possibility of resistance and repair. “In order to prevent collapse, you have to first believe in the possibility of its avoidance.”
Several works appear to directly address humanity’s ambition to dominate the planet, the sky and even the cosmos. But unlike the modernist tradition that so often glorified technological progress, Toranzo Jaeger’s paintings interrogate that myth from the inside out. “It’s all about the idea that our collective psychological space is created by the systems under which we live,” she clarified. “By understanding these systems, we regain agency, but we also understand our limitations.”
To truly contend with the “psychological space of capitalism,” Toranzo Jaeger argues, we must confront the legacy of colonization and its ongoing effects. We must also ask—and answer—the question “What is fascism?” as it shifts in form. Without that understanding, we remain lost in a landscape we do not recognize. And in this sense, she explains, her paintings act as political prompts—tools for collective critical liberation. “They are embedded with questions about where power goes and how it operates. Our contemporary reality is particularly complex, as it is increasingly difficult to track ideologies, as they collapse into one another to substantiate power.”
The automobile, a recurring subject in her work, stands as a metaphor for navigating the lived experience of “queer people, people of color, within a system that rejects them.” For Toranzo Jaeger, the car is both capitalism’s ultimate vehicle—a mechanism of time/space distortion—and a contradictory hybrid of exteriority and interiority.
At the same time, the artist’s use of the traditional polyptych format links her work to a deeper interrogation of religious iconography and ideology—specifically as a reaction to the enduring influence of Catholicism in Mexico, a belief system inherited from the country’s colonial past. Three ‘toolbox’ paintings in the show pay direct homage to the Catholic altarpieces of 14th- and 15th-century Italy, once used as portable tools of devotion. In Toranzo Jaeger’s version, the instruments housed inside these painted “altars” become symbols and prompts for a much-needed spiritual and critical repair of a society still enthralled by hollow narratives of supposed progress and self-improvement.
Still, as the title of the exhibition “Impersonal Unity Tools” makes plain, Toranzo Jaeger resists using autobiography to justify or anchor her practice. “I’m invested instead in universal liberation,” she said. “Gods were the first concepts created, and religions, the systems generated to make sense of them.” Paintings, she continues, were among the earliest tools in that education. Her goal is to develop paintings whose epistemological value can be understood universally—even as they directly challenge the ideologies those early images once served.
Seen through this lens, the connection between Toranzo Jaeger’s practice and Mexico’s long tradition of Muralism comes into sharper focus. She considers Muralism one of the most revolutionary artistic movements of the 20th Century. “And why is that? Because it was one of the few movements actually invested in its ideological effectiveness,” she told Observer. “By literally taking art outside the museums, galleries and institutions, the artists gave art directly to the people. This effectively dismantled, or at least circumvented, the bourgeois ideology that controls what can and cannot be seen—the system which has prevented all other artistic movements from affecting the material reality of its time.” Deemed too politically dangerous, the artists behind the movement were ultimately shut out by the government, and the Muralist project faded. Still, for Toranzo Jaeger, the legacy of Muralism stands as a powerful reminder of what art can do, and it remains deeply embedded in her own revolutionary practice.
Ultimately, Frieda Toranzo Jaeger’s exhibition at Bortolami issues a call for resilience and resistance in the face of pre-established ideologies, invoking a mode of creative expression and critical thinking capable of challenging arbitrary systems of value and envisioning a freer society. While technology threatens to disempower us gradually—via misinformation, fake news and the pressure to construct our beliefs around fabricated narratives—Toranzo Jaeger stakes out, through the aesthetics of handcraft, a defiant counterpoint to accelerating forces of erasure.
Frieda Toranzo Jaeger’s “Impersonal Unity Tools” is on view at Bortolami, New York, through April 26, 2025.
