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The art of the piñata

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The art of the piñata

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Content Copyright 2023 Sofia M. Fernandez

The Art of the Piñata

by

Sofia M. Fernandez

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ANNENBERG SCHOOL
FOR COMMUNICATION AND JOURNALISM
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(SPECIALIZED JOURNALISM)

May 2023

ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Artist Justin Favela and the author in front of Favela’s “Beyond Timeless” installation at the Mingei International Museum on
Mar. 10, 2023. (Photo by Linda Gonzalez)

Enormous gratitude to the artists, museum and gallery staff, academics, public relations
teams and art lovers who shared their time and expertise during this two-year piñata odyssey.

Allison Agsten
Antonio Alcalá
Rene Ballesteros
Diana Benavidez
Roberto Benavidez
Ashley Christie
Karen Mary Davalos
Justin Favela
Kenneth Fenner
Shannon Foley
Alayna Barrett Fox
Sarah Bay Gachot
José Daniel Picado García
Rebecca Gomez
Linda Gonzalez
Jadira Gurulé
Joan Mace
Raquel Aguiñaga Martinez
Jim McKean
Victor Melendez
Rebecca D. Meyers
Phoebe Millerwhite
Dr. Tey Marianna Nunn
Francisco Palomares
Shannon Robinson
Lorena Robletto
Isaías D. Rodríguez
Albert Ruiz
Dr. Patricia Ruiz-Healy
Angela Sanchez
Brandi Shawn-Chaparro
Jason Jay Stevens
M. Giovanni Valderas
Emily Zaiden

iii

Thank you to my thesis chairman Oscar Garza for the numerous reads, edits and check-
ins, and to committee members Willa Seidenberg and Keith Plocek for their input.
I could not have pursued nor completed my degree without the scheduling flexibility of
my Yahoo colleagues, and the understanding and support of family and friends.

iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. ii

List of Figures …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… v

Abstract ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. vi

Introduction: The Art of the Piñata ………………………………………………………………………………………….. 2

Chapter 1: The Piñata Problem ………………………………………………………………………………………………… 4

Chapter 2: Origins ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 7

Chapter 3: Pioneers …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 8

Chapter 4: Piñata as Art Object ……………………………………………………………………………………………… 15

Chapter 5: Tradition Meets Exhibition …………………………………………………………………………………… 19

Chapter 6: Industry ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 23

Chapter 7: Commerce ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 27

Chapter 8: 2023 and Beyond …………………………………………………………………………………………………. 28

Bibliography ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 30

v
LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Roberto Benavidez, “Bosch Beast No. 6”…………………………………………………………………… 1

Figure 2: Lorena Robletto, “Seven Point Star Installation” ………………………………………………………. 5

Figure 3: Chuck Ramirez, “Gregory” ………………………………………………………………………………………… 8

Figure 4: Justin Favela, “Pura Suerte” ……………………………………………………………………………………..10

Figure 5: Amorette Crespo, “Zoom Laptop” …………………………………………………………………………… 11

Figure 6: Justin Favela, "Mantecore (White Tiger Blanket)" …………………………………………………… 12

Figure 7: Roberto Benavidez, “Heart Tree” ……………………………………………………………………………. 13

Figure 8: Diana Benavidez, “Border Crosser” …………………………………………………………………………. 17

Figure 9: Toluca, Estado de México (figure) and Guadalajara, Jalisco (stick), Piñata de político/
Politician Piñata …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 19

Figure 10: Moises Salazar, "Cuerpos Desechables: La Ruta, Mexico” ……………………………………… 21

Figure 11: Amazing Piñatas lobby ………………………………………………………………………………………….. 23

Figure 12: Yesenia Prieto, "Perceived Value" …………………………………………………………………………. 24

Figure 13: Sofia M. Fernandez, “Burro Dreams of Being a Horse” ………………………………………….. 25

Figure 14: United States Postal Service, “Piñata ‘Forever’ stamps” ………………………………………… 28

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ABSTRACT
The piñata is a treasured aspect of life in the Americas, signifying celebration at birthday
parties and other special occasions. But lost in its ubiquity is the acknowledgment of the craft
and effort that went into its creation. The piñata does not exist without human hands bringing
it to life.
The piñata has evolved into its own art form — one that is recognized at museums and
galleries throughout the United States. This thesis follows the piñata beyond its capacity at
backyard gatherings to its status as an art object. Interviews with artists, curators, academics
and museum staff provide history and context of its role in contemporary art. A review of
prominent works explores various interpretations of the craft, its materials and the social
critiques and statements that can take shape through the innocuous form.
As an art object, the piñata challenges Eurocentric classifications and dares institutional
gatekeepers to embrace an accessible genre that could inspire new generations of artists and
art lovers. Fundamentally, the piñata is Latinidad to its core: welcoming, evolving and
undeniably worldly.
1

Figure 1: Roberto Benavidez, “Bosch Beast No. 6,” 2017, mixed media (paper, paperboard, glue, crepe paper & wire), 30x15x
8” and “Bosch Paper Painting,” 2019, mixed media: paper, paperboard, glue, wire, crepe paper. Diana Berger Gallery, Mar.
18, 2023. (Photo by Sofia M. Fernandez)
2
INTRODUCTION: THE ART OF THE PIÑATA
Once you begin paying attention to piñatas, there’s no turning back. They’re at Trader
Joe’s as seasonal Piñata apples. There’s an emoji one on your smartphone and murderous one
on the loose in the low-budget horror sequel, “Bride of the Killer Piñata.” Mexican artisans turn
out brilliant works under pressure in Netflix's "Piñata Masters" reality competition. Even
Michelle Yeoh and Stephanie Hsu take the shape of piñatas in one of their many "Everything
Everywhere All at Once" multiverses.
Beyond kitsch and pop culture, piñatas are populating varied corners of the art world
too.
Filling the second floor of the Mingei International Museum in San Diego, "Piñatas: The
High Art of Celebration" spotlights the form, technique and ideas behind these contemporary
art pieces that are embracing and upending tradition. Galleries in three states are displaying the
work of Justin Favela, best known for incorporating the traditional technique and materials of
piñatas — tissue paper, cardboard, fringe — into large-scale installations and pieces. In Walnut,
California, Roberto Benavidez’s exquisite birds and otherworldly creatures gather for his solo
“In the Garden: Piñatas” exhibition.
The piñata has evolved from an amusement to be battered and busted open to an art
object worthy of galleries and museum collections.
“To be in a museum is what you want,” said Benavidez, a paper artist based in Los
Angeles. “It gives you legitimacy that can’t be denied. I am thinking about it in terms of the craft
3
of the piñata and where we as a group of artists are pushing it. It adds value for everybody if
you make headway that way.”
Benavidez’s home studio is a bedroom-turned-art space packed with hundreds of rolls
of Italian crepe paper, works in progress, finished pieces, jugs of bookbinding glue, paper strips
prepped for cutting, and bright shapes that will come together into finished sculptural forms.
He painstakingly cuts thousands of strips of paper for “as long as it takes” to create the patterns
and textures that adorn his pieces.
Benavidez and his fine art contemporaries are broadening the scope of what a piñata
can be. They’re also challenging concepts embedded in the art world, that certain materials or
processes constitute how work is categorized and displayed.
“My message is always about blurring the lines and dismantling these hierarchies of
what’s craft, what’s fine art,” Favela said. Favela’s work has been exhibited at the Denver Art
Museum, the Des Moines Art Center and MAC Belfast in Northern Ireland, but he’s not
confining his art to traditional spaces. He said, “I’ve shown at craft centers. I’m going to do a
thing at a library in Bakersfield. I think art should be for the people.”
And yet, the piñata has not been classified as a legitimate art object.
4
CHAPTER 1: THE PIÑATA PROBLEM
A search for “piñata” in the Getty Research Institute’s Art & Architecture Thesaurus
categorizes it under “game equipment” and “Recreational Artifacts.” Digging further, the piñata
is described as a vessel. A search of Oxford Art Online returns four results for “piñata,” with
only one related to art — Meg Cranston’s “Magical Death” piñatas from the early aughts. The
Nomenclature for Museum Cataloguing website lists the piñata under “Recreational Objects.”
These and other resources such as the Getty’s Categories for the Description of Works
of Art hint at the presence of the piñata but do not truly recognize it as an art object. When this
occurs in mainstream art sources, or when a craft is categorized solely in a one context due to
cultural blind spots, this defines what Chicano studies and art curators refer to as the “piñata
problem.”
“Mainstream institutions use Western conventional strategies for describing material
that we would call art, that includes a piñata,” said Karen Mary Davalos, the “co-intellectual
architect” of the Creando Raíces/Creating Rhizomes project cataloging Mexican American art
and artists, among other goals. “In the museum system and many other systems, a piñata does
not have a word. There is no such thing as the category ‘piñata.’ The closest thing is a vessel.”
Vessels are hollow, like piñatas, but more akin to antiquities such as bowls or jugs. As
Davalos put it during a Saturday morning video call from her home office, “My colleague,
Connie Cortez, tells a story: ‘I bet the Met [Metropolitan Museum of Art] would be really angry
if we took a stick to all their vessels.’ Because that’s what you do with the piñata.”
5
Davalos continued: “It gets worse. In some cataloging systems, a vessel is described in
Greek — amfora. You and I and about 90% of the Southwest United States would never think of
those words. Basically, [the piñata is] invisible. It’s hidden because we would never use those
two words, amfora or vessel, to find a piñata on a database that’s public.”
To remedy this and other cultural biases involving Latino art, Davalos, a Chicano and
Latino studies professor at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, and Cortez, professor of
Chicana/o Art History and Post Contact
Art of Mexico at the University of Texas
Rio Grande Valley, recently launched
the Mexican American Art Since 1848
database documenting and classifying
Mexican American art held in
collections nationwide. The portal is
one of four components of their
Creando Raices/Creating Rhizomes
Initiative that is addressing the inherent
challenges of using Eurocentric
taxonomies for non-Eurocentric
creations.
The first step of the multi-phase project was to combine information from existing
resources such as the Smithsonian Collections Search Center and the University of California’s
Calisphere. Eventually, institutions such as the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago and
Figure 2: “Seven Point Star Installation,” Lorena Robletto (Amazing
Piñatas), Craft in America, Oct. 26, 2021. (Photo by Sofia M. Fernandez)
6
the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque will share collection information with the
Creating Rhizomes team to gather even more data about Latino art and artists. The idea is to
intertwine the information the way rhizomes — horizontal root systems — do, each benefitting
the other. “Whenever you get to an item page, it’s going to take you back to the original
steward, and that was super exciting,” Davalos said. “We want to increase traffic to our
stakeholder museums.”
7
CHAPTER 2: ORIGINS
The piñata has taken shape through a confluence of cultures as diverse as the Americas
themselves. It is most commonly recognized as an empty cardboard or papier-mache form
stuffed with goodies — candy, gum, adult party favors — and bashed with a stick until its
hidden treats spill to the ground. In Mexico, the seven-pointed star piñata is popular during
celebrations, particularly posadas, the reenacted journey of a pregnant Mary and Joseph to
Bethlehem. In the U.S., piñatas entertain adults and children alike at parties and other
celebratory events.
There is no definitive account of how the piñata tradition came to the Americas, but
there are clues about its influences. The Chinese tradition of Dachunniu, the hitting of the
spring ox or other clay shapes filled with seeds, likely spread to the Americas and Europe
through exploration, trade and immigration. In early 16th Century Italy, a pignatta, a clay pot
filled with treats, would be shattered during Lent. This practice migrated to Spain, and later to
the New World with Catholic missionaries who used the seven-pointed star as a tool of
conversion. Mayans, and later Aztecs, had their own customs of breaking vessels too.
“The tradition of making ceramic objects and shattering them, having them filled with
symbolic and valued something — sweets or seeds or money — is something that exists in
various parts of the world,” said Emily Zaiden, Director of the Craft in America Center in Los
Angeles. Zaiden studied piñatas and their role in contemporary art for four years prior to
opening an exhibit dedicated exclusively to them in 2021.
8
CHAPTER 3: PIONEERS
Piñata art isn’t solely about creating an object. It also encompasses related techniques
or, as with the late Texas artist
Chuck Ramirez, examines the
form through a different
medium. Ramirez’s “Gregory,” a
photograph of a knock-off Hello
Kitty piñata dressed in pink with
its head, well, knocked off, is in
the permanent collection of the
San Antonio Museum of Art.
Created between 2002-2003,
“Gregory” is one of Ramirez’s
“Piñata Series” photographs
that gave discarded piñatas new
life, elevating the remains to a
glossy format.
“I think Chuck is the pioneer of doing a high-quality photograph of a piñata that has
been used,” said Dr. Patricia Ruiz-Healy, Founder and Director of San Antonio’s Ruiz-Healy Art,
the exclusive representative of Ramirez’s estate. “He was always about [exploring the scene]
Figure 3: Chuck Ramirez, American, 1962 – 2010, “Gregory” (Piñata Series), 2003,
Ink jet print (aluminum backing), h: 60 in. (152.4 cm); w: 48 in. (121.9 cm); d: 1
5/16 in. (3.4 cm), San Antonio Museum of Art, Gift of Michael D. Maloney with
conservation assistance from Patricia Ruiz-Healy, 2010.28.14. © Chuck Ramirez.
Photography by Ansen Seale. Image courtesy of the San Antonio Museum of Art.
9
after the party, like the remains of the day. It was about the celebration of life and the passing
of life.”
Franco Mondini-Ruiz, a friend of Ramirez, offered his own take on the piñata in Artpace
San Antonio’s “Modern Piñatas” show in 2007. His commentary on pop and contemporary art
figures were piñatas referencing Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s soup cans and Brillo boxes, Jeff
Koons’s silvery rabbit figures, and Jasper Johns’s “Target.” According to exhibit notes, Mondini-
Ruiz “resituates the works in a Latino context, alluding to the cross-cultural appropriation of
images.”
In Los Angeles, the Hammer Museum’s 2013 “Game Room” exhibit displayed Sarah Bay
Gachot’s game-inspired piñatas first as art objects, then as the focus of an interactive session.
Allison Agsten, former Curator of Public Engagement at the Hammer, said the piñatas “lived as
art objects” until the finale of the exhibit when they were busted apart in customary fashion.
“I certainly considered them an object on the level of the other objects. They just had a
different intention,” Agsten said. “It was not that their destruction didn't mean that they were
lesser by any stretch of the imagination within the context of the other works. It just meant
that the nature of the work itself was different.”
These individual works and exhibitions were at the cusp of something bigger: entire
exhibitions dedicated to the art of the piñata, first in Albuquerque, then in Los Angeles.
The National Hispanic Cultural Center’s “The Piñata Exhibit (Sure to be a Smash Hit!)” in
2017 is considered the first all-piñata show in the United States. The exhibition assembled
piñata art from throughout the country to highlight its presence as an art form.
10

Figure 4: Justin Favela, “Pura Suerte,” (2016), Styrofoam, wood, plastic, paper, aluminum foil, glue. National Hispanic Cultural
Center Art Museum Permanent Collection. Gift of the New Mexico Museum of Art. Photo by Incredible Films. Image courtesy
NHCC.
Jadira Gurulé, Head Curator and a Program Manager for the Art Museum and Visual Arts
program at the cultural center said, “We planned this exhibition as a way to really explore the
art form of piñatas, but also their increasing popularity in a variety of popular culture forms —
politics, art forms other than piñatas referencing piñatas.”
Four years after the Albuquerque show, Emily Zaiden curated the standalone “Piñatas:
The High Art of Celebration” at the Craft in America Center in Los Angeles. The piñatas in the
show shed their ephemerality in favor of permanence. The artists used “this whole language of
what piñatas are to make their own statements and messages about identity politics,
economics, housing, the COVID pandemic — a whole range of topics,” Zaiden said, standing
11
beneath the center’s front window display filled with the piñata monarch butterflies of Isaías D.
Rodríguez’s “Resilience” installation.
The show featured
paintings, sculptures, video
installations of performance
art, and piñata replicas of
coronavirus-themed pieces
such as a vaccine vial, a
COVID-19 cell, and a laptop by
Los Angeles-based Amorette
Crespo, whose Party Girl
Piñatas business makes custom piñatas. The laptop, depicting a Zoom interface, was a response
to the unprecedented moment in time when the coronavirus pandemic upended classroom
education and office culture. As one Etsy reviewer wrote, “The laptop piñata was a huge hit
(pun intended), looked fantastic and, as it turned out, it’s surprisingly therapeutic to hit Zoom
with a broom handle.”
Zaiden expanded the show in 2022 as guest curator at the Mingei International Museum
in San Diego. With more gallery space, the art — and statements — were bigger and bolder.
“To see our little show get blown up on this scale is just incredibly thrilling,” Zaiden told
a buzzing crowd at the Mingei opening reception in October. “We started four years ago, and
the world has completely transformed over that stretch of time. What was most remarkable
Figure 5: Amorette Crespo, “Zoom Laptop.” Image courtesy Craft in America.
12
about starting the show was thinking about piñatas as these anchoring handcrafted objects at
gatherings and festivities, and these moments that we all share together in our memories. We
lost all that for a while. It's incredibly important to be thinking about all those moments now
through this show. And these artists address all of that in their work and they also add this
really powerful political meaningful level to what piñata is.”
Las Vegas artist Justin Favela
created the site-specific installation,
“Beyond Timeless,” one of his signature
life-size lowrider piñatas, for the
expanded show. It was the first time that
Favela fashioned one of his cars after a
Buick Riviera. Previous works were
Chevrolet Impalas. “It’s a combination of
the same lowrider, but I combined three
iterations because lowriders evolve over
time,” Favela explained from Springdale,
Arkansas, where he’s spending time
during a year-long residency at the Momentary contemporary art space. “Like the first time
they paint them and soup ‘em up, decorate them. They keep reinventing it or improving the
car. I had elements of all three stages of the car represented in this one piñata.”
“Mantecore (White Tiger Blanket),” his portrait of the tiger that attacked Seigfried &
Roy entertainer Roy Horn in 2003, hung behind the car, its delicate tissue paper fluttering in a
Figure 6: Justin Favela, "Mantecore (White Tiger Blanket)," Mingei
International Museum, Oct. 29, 2022. (Photo by Sofia M. Fernandez)
13
mild breeze from the air conditioner. During an artist talk at the Mingei Museum in March,
Favela explained that he was able to observe The Mirage’s captive tigers through a friendship
with an animal trainer. The city’s singularity influenced Favela’s piñata art as a University of
Nevada, Las Vegas art student and beyond. “Conceptually, the fact that my work is ephemeral,
is a direct tie to me being from Las Vegas because nothing there is built to last longer than 15
years. All the places where my family worked were imploded and now there's new buildings
there. The projects where I grew up are gone.”
He continued: “My work is tied to
that, but also it fits in with this narrative of
the Chicano movement and the Mexican
muralist movement … the space that we’re
allowed to take as Latinos in America, like
the murals, these temporary objects.
Lowriders, those are monuments. I feel like
the piñata fits into that.”
Roberto Benavidez’s exquisitely
detailed birds had more room to forage at
the second incarnation of the “High Art”
show, with one larger-than-life bird holding
a berry as it’s perched atop a red cone-shaped “Heart Tree.“
Figure 7: Roberto Benavidez, “Heart Tree,” 2019 & 2022. Mingei
International Museum, Oct. 29, 2022. (Photo by Sofia M.
Fernandez)
14
Unbeknownst to museum visitors who are not allowed to handle the piñata sculptures,
Benavidez inserts each with a mystery object. “I never talk about what’s in them,” Benavidez said.
“I did not anticipate just how intrigued people would be by what’s inside. I don’t want to kill that
part of the experience of telling people what’s inside. I just want them to think about it.”
The artist’s mesmerizing “piñata paintings” of the moon at Skunk Point on Santa Rosa
Island in Southern California demonstrate the precision in which layered rows of triangular-
tipped colored paper can create seascapes as fluid as a painting. Using the same methods,
Benavidez’s “Piñathkos” (piñata + Rothko) series achieves a blended color effect of Mark Rothko’s
color field paintings. His recent solo show at Mt. San Antonio College’s Diana Berger Gallery
highlighted the playfulness and precision of the form. “Coming up with a certain kind of fringe
that I make gives me a signature look or texture,” Benavidez said.
Diana Benavidez’s (no relation to Roberto) massive piñata rosary, “La Culpa Por Estar
Hecha de Papel (Guilt for Being Made of Paper)” is featured in the Mingei incarnation of the
show, alongside her U.S.-Mexico border and surveillance pieces from the original L.A. exhibition.
Also included are the oversized keys and sneakers from her “Text Me When You Get Home”
series, which comments on the perils of female existence and the unspoken understanding
between women that you’re not safe until entering your front door.

15
CHAPTER 4: PIÑATA AS ART OBJECT
Diana Benavidez’s piñata practice began in 2015 as an undergrad at the University of
California San Diego. As part of a body of work titled “Raised in Chula Juana,” Benavidez made a
toilet paper roll piñata representing her transnational upbringing in Tijuana, Mexico. “This toilet
paper piñata had a significance in my culture shock, coming back-and-forth” across the border,
she said in a video interview from her apartment in San Diego. “It was a shock to me that on this
side of the border you flush toilet paper, whereas in Tijuana, you flush toilet paper and you block
everyone’s plumbing.”
Later, while prepping pieces for a show at the school’s Adam D. Kamil Gallery, Benavidez
realized she needed to build pedestals to display her objects. “My piñatas were not designed
functionally. The function of them were sculptures. To me that was the moment where [I
thought], Woah, I’m going to be putting piñatas on pedestals.”
And with that, the humble piñata became an art object for Benavídez.
At the National Hispanic Cultural Center (NHCC) show in Albuquerque, piñatas were
hung and displayed on pedestals, as is routine for sculptures. “We had piñatas hanging
everywhere. But we also had a number of them on pedestals, too,” current NHCC curator
Gurulé said. “I think a lot of people appreciated the mental shift of being like, Oh, I think about
them in this way. And it does call attention to the creator when we start to think about it as an
art object as well.”
“I think that piñatas are fine art,” said Dr. Tey Marianna Nunn, curator of the 2017 NHCC
show and current Director of the American Women's History Initiative at the Smithsonian
16
American Women's History Museum. “I think that Euro aesthetic categories of ‘What is art?’
have confined them recently in folk art or arte popular. For me, it’s who has made the
categories originally — very colonized categories — and it’s about decolonizing those categories
and really realizing that the artists who make piñatas are masters.”
Piñatas are typically referenced as craft or under a folk art banner. That, says the
University of Minnesota’s Davalos, is another shortcoming of Eurocentric classifications.
“I don't think there's a category of craft art, that's an invention by the West, a colonial
invention.” She continued: “In the portal, we're getting rid of the words ‘folk art’ and ‘craft.’ It's
all art. There's no hierarchy of trying to describe or have an aboutness that means this is
somehow not as important or as spectacular, or as beautiful, or as technically skilled. They're all
art. That’s an intervention that is a critique of the current art world system, and that
intervention goes back to all the post-colonial, de-colonial actions that have been happening
since the 1500s.”
“There's a lot of weight in terms of museums put into the objects that last long,”
explained Craft in America’s Zaiden. “The ephemeral is lost. But if you think about mandalas
and tradition, all kinds of ephemeral art exist. I think it's also that these [piñatas] serve a
purpose and are accessible to anyone potentially. There's an element that's excluded them
from being art forms because of that broad appeal.”
Zaiden continued, “The focus here is really just to remind people of the power that
individuals have with their hands of making beautiful objects that give us meaning in our lives,
17
that are part of our culture, that define who we are at any given point in time. And piñatas are
absolutely that.”
The familiarity of the piñata can both attract and perplex museum visitors. Rebecca
Gomez, a curator at the National Hispanic Cultural Center Art Museum, remembered a visitor’s
visceral reaction seeing piñatas at Austin’s Mexic-Arte Museum, where she formerly worked.
“This child — very young, young child — came into the museum. We had the piñatas out. The
kid shouts out to his mom, ‘Look at the piñatas! This is not a real museum.’ That has been my
biggest resistance.”
As Nunn puts it,
“Because they’re
ephemeral, because they’ve
entered into the
mainstream, people forget
all the artistry and all the
symbolism that goes into
them.”
Diana Benavidez recalls being told during her studies to branch out from her piñata
work. “In the beginning, my art — in an academic [setting] wasn’t being recognized as a
medium. I did two solo shows in undergrad, and after the second show, one of my professors
said ‘You should move on to something different. You’ve done piñatas. Now, next thing.’ And I
was like, I feel like it can keep going. This is just starting for me.”
Figure 8: Diana Benavidez, “Border Crosser” (from Vehiculos Transfronterizos series),
2019. Mingei International Museum, Mar.10, 2023. (Photo by Sofia M. Fernandez)
18
Benavidez’s piñatas have since been featured in solo exhibitions in San Diego as well as
in a recent public TV profile. She’s now also an education specialist at the Mingei, which gave
her insight to those who are more skeptical of the art form: “At the Mingei museum we have an
older crowd — more traditional, like docents — and it was kind of hard for some to accept the
medium as something that could live in a gallery space or in a museum space. It's such an
accessible object that there's definitely going to be resistance by some.”
Her work was also in the “Quien(es) Romp(en) Las Piñatas? (Who Breaks the Piñata?)”
show at the Museum of Art and Contemporary Design in San Juan, Costa Rica. First opened in
August 2022, the exhibit generated intense interest during a citywide arts event that attracted
2,000 people in a week’s time. “One important thing is that this exhibition let us bring to the
museum a lot of people that have never been in a museum,” said curator José Daniel Picado
García from his office in San Juan. “It was a first contact for a lot of people to a museum
context.”
A similar response occurred in 2019 at Roberto Benavidez’s “Piñatas of Earthly Delights”
exhibit at the University of California Santa Barbara’s Art Design and Architecture Museum.
Benavidez said he was warned not to expect much in terms of attendance because the show
was scheduled in typically slower summer months. But his piñata depictions of animals and
creatures from Hieronymus Bosch’s turn-of-the-15th Century painting, The Garden of Earthly
Delights, had the museum’s highest daily visitation for summer exhibits since 2012. Benavidez
reflected: “I think people are intrigued when they learn that piñatas are being used this way.”

19
CHAPTER 5: TRADITION MEETS EXHIBITION
“Surrounding Kahlo: Works from the
Permanent Collection,” at Chicago’s National Museum
of Mexican Art from March 2022 through January
2023, featured a Donald Trump piñata in an imagining
of what Mexican artist Frida Kahlo’s studio would look
like today. The Kahlo figure posed with the palo used
to strike the piñata, a stand-in for the artist’s “Judas”
figures representing “death, the devil or reviled
politicians,” according to the display didactic.
Trump piñatas were a boon to the piñata
industry during the 2016 election and ensuing
presidency. Lorena Robletto of Los Angeles’s Amazing
Piñatas estimated that she sold thousands of Trump
piñatas over the course of his term. “Usually, you
would sell Batman hero piñatas,” she said. But once
kids saw the president’s likeness, that’s what they
wanted.
“Later on, I figured that they probably knew
what was happening with Donald Trump,” Robletto
said. “His wanting to kick all of us out [of the U.S.], his words about criminals coming over, and
Figure 9: Detail of Toluca, Estado de México (figure) and
Guadalajara, Jalisco (stick), Piñata de político /
Politician Piñata, 2018, polychrome papier-mache,
plastic and mixed media / papel-mache
policromado,plástico y técnica mixta, 52" x 28" x 15"
(piñata) / 40 1/2" x 2 " x 2 1/2" (stick), National
Museum of Mexican Art Permanent Collection,
2018.295 A-B, Gift of Dulcelandia Candy Stores and the
Rodríguez Family; installation photo credit: Michael
Tropea. Image courtesy of the National Museum of
Mexican Art.
20
building the wall. It became a political hot issue. The kids went along and felt this was a threat.
Rather than having Batman, [they thought] I want to beat Donald Trump.”
This trend is reflected in director Sarah Clift’s 2016 short film, “La Madre Buena (The
Good Mother),” a fictionalized account of a Mexican boy’s insistence on having a Trump piñata
at his birthday celebration, and the lengths his mother goes to find one. The film was featured
in the Quien(es) Romp(en) Las Piñatas? exhibition and has been screened by the Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Palm Springs Film Festival. It was also a British Film
Institute pick of the month.
Nunn, curator of the Albuquerque piñata exhibit, recalled scouring shops in Los Angeles
for a piñata of an opposition politician to hang alongside Trump to provide a balanced
perspective. A shopkeeper in Los Angeles had one — and only one — Hillary Clinton piñata,
“because no one ever bought them,” according to Nunn.
The tradition of piñatas and politicians is especially strong in the southern Americas.
“Yes, it is this festive object. It is super popular in this partying context, but also it can have
these very deep and complex dimensions,” explained Picado García in Costa Rica. “In this Latin
American context, the piñata has been used to make certain [criticisms], to seize political
systems, social systems. This object that is smashed or broken leads us to start using it in a
more critical way. In a contemporary art context, this opportunity has been used to address the
multi-dimensional characteristics that the piñata has.”
Artists from various disciplines have experimented juxtaposing the traditionally festive
piñata with unexpected subject matter for decades. In 2004, Black artist Dave McKenzie
21
displayed a video installation at the Studio Museum of Harlem of children beating his 2002 self-
portrait piñata without them realizing their actions could be construed as a lynching. Meg
Cranston’s 2003 “Magical Death” series, included in the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary
Art’s permanent collection (and Oxford Online’s sole piñata art reference), appropriated the
piñata form for self-portraits in various everyday states: lifting weights, suspended cross-legged
with boots. Her objective was to depict herself as a martyr by making an object that would
eventually be broken apart.
Moises Salazar’s 2020 Cuerpos Deschables (Disposable Bodies) series at the Chicago
Cultural Center’s “In
Flux: Chicago Artists and
Immigration” show,
brought attention to the
detached attitude of
many people toward
migrants and children
held in detention
centers. In galleries, his
faceless humanoid
piñatas appeared as
huddled curiosities.
When situated in real Mexican streets and alleys, with only hands and feet exposed, the works
took a darker turn, emphasizing the detached treatment of humans by humans.
Figure 10: Moises Salazar, "Cuerpos Desechables: La Ruta, Mexico," 2020. Image courtesy Moises
Salazar.
22
Sarah Bay Gachot’s 2014 interactive work, “You Are Smashing: a Piñata,” at the REDCAT
gallery in Los Angeles, had been envisioned as a meditation on time, but ended up being a
lesson in museum etiquette. Gachot hung a crystal-shaped piñata filled with items related to
time — watches, things that grow slowly, books about time — and waited for people to bash it.
Participants were hesitant, said Gachot: “How long is it going to take people to realize that this
is an invitation? This piñata is an invitation for you to partake in this experience. Because it was
very participatory.”

23
CHAPTER 6: INDUSTRY
Commercial piñatas sold in the U.S. and abroad are manufactured primarily in Mexico
and China, and exist in a mostly unregulated industry, where piñateros, or, piñata makers, face
issues plaguing other unregulated labor markets in the U.S: pay, health, and the illusion of
unskilled labor.
There is no mass manufacturing of
piñatas. Every single one in existence has
had human hands on it at some point.
“Most of these pieces, every layer
of tissue is laid on by hand, one piece at a
time. It’s cut by hand. It’s created and
built and put together by hand,” third
generation piñatera Yesenia Prieto said at
a 2021 Craft in America panel on the
economics of piñata making.
Piñateros walk a delicate balance
of maintaining successful businesses while
supporting their staff. Robletto says the Amazing Piñatas company in Los Angeles incorporates
a three-pronged approach: exceed customer expectations, pay living wages, and turn a profit.
But these equitable efforts can be hampered by survival mechanisms that have been
ingrained into workers who are paid by the piece and prioritize quantity over quality to make a
Figure 11: Amazing Piñatas lobby, Nov. 11, 2022. (Photo by Sofia M.
Fernandez)
24
living. Robletto explained, “They're used to working so fast. And when I said, ‘I'm not going to
pay you $3, let me give you $8 or $9 a piece for that,’ they do them, but the quality doesn't
change, and they do more.”
Robletto said she has shifted to hourly wages and has turned to recruiting people new
to the craft to avoid the “pay by the piece” pressures that plague many workers in the
unforgiving industry.
Piñatas sold at Target, Michaels or
other retailers are less expensive than
those at independently owned
businesses, but it’s difficult to track the
working conditions of the people who
make them. The exploitation of
piñatero labor has even been traced to
England’s royal family. In 2013, a Daily
Mail exposé connected Party Pieces,
the U.K.-based party supply business
responsible for Kate Middleton’s
family’s wealth, to underpaid piñata
makers in Tijuana.
The value of a piñata and the work behind it are constantly being challenged in both
commercial and artistic worlds. A disconnect exists that devalues the craft and workmanship
that went into making the piñata because its purpose is to be destroyed.
Figure 12: Yesenia Prieto, "Perceived Value," Mingei International
Museum, Oct. 29, 2022. (Photo by Sofia M. Fernandez)
25
Prieto’s “Perceived Value” installation at the Mingei tackles this issue head-on. She took
hundreds of paper and plastic strips from the cutting room floor of her piñata-making business
and repurposed them as the backdrop to a life-sized,
camouflaged, punk piñata woman wearing a blindfold that
reads “perceived value,” holding a palo behind her back,
ready to strike at hanging red piggy banks of money. The
remnants of the piñata were invaluable to this piece.
Piñata-making requires a minimum of four phases:
design, construction, dressing and decoration. If, for
example, the piñata is of a burro, the piñatero designs the
form. Are its legs all on the ground or is a hoof raised? What
size is the burro? Does it have a tail? What colors will it be?
Will it have a mane? Once those questions are answered, the
piñatero constructs it in the material best suited for the
project. A dresser then attaches each layer of tissue by hand
(the tissue is also likely cut by hand) from the bottom up. The
final step is to decorate the form with eyes, fringe, glitter,
etc.
A workshop at the Mingei Museum led by Isaías D.
Rodríguez in November 2022 gave participants a crash course
in this process. Known professionally as The Little Piñata Maker, Rodríguez specializes in making
palm-sized piñatas. “My work is about how I see life and how I live life,” Rodríguez said in an
Figure 13: Sofia M. Fernandez, construction
of "Burro Dreams of Being a Horse,"
Mingei International Museum workshop,
Nov. 11, 2022. (Photos by Sofia M.
Fernandez)
26
interview at the opening of the Mingei show in October. Standing amid the hummingbirds and
butterflies of his “Resilience” installation, his mohawk neatly coiffed, Rodríguez explained: “I
didn’t make this to make a cute little piñata, I made this specifically to honor two of my sisters
who passed away. The monarchs and the hummingbirds represent people who we carry — the
spirits, the ancestors.”
For the Mingei workshop, he supplied the approximately two dozen participants with
paint, markers, paint brushes, pens, glue, gallon plastic bags filled with pre-cut crepe paper
separated by color, and pre-constructed 2-D forms made from manila file folders. A Cricut
machine helped produce these forms, but Rodríguez said he stenciled and cut all of his shapes
by hand for the first 12 years of his career.
The workshoppers picked a favored shape — butterfly, burro, taco — designed its
“look,” and painted the surface with colors indicating the color of shredded paper that would
be glued on. Once the glue was applied, the group affixed paper and placed the piece into a
makeshift dryer. An intricate design took several trips in and out of the dryer in order to
decorate every angle of the work. The process spilled past the workshop’s two hours, even with
the materials already prepped.

27
CHAPTER 7: COMMERCE
Commercial interests are far ahead of art institutions in terms of cataloging piñatas. An
Artsy.net search for the term “piñata” returns 104 artworks, including the Angel Cabrales
sculpture, “Tender Care Piñata,” a seven-pointed star commenting on the “dehumanization of
migrants” made from steel, electronics, dolls, blankets and rosaries. Selections from Chuck
Ramirez’s “Piñata Series” are priced upwards of $12,500, and Mondini-Ruiz’s “Jasper Johns
Target Piñata” (2007) runs about $395.
David LaChapelle’s 2006 photograph, “I’m Your Piñata,” depicts a red-haired woman
standing in black bra and panties and high-high black leather boots in a piñata shop, among
innocuous SpongeBob SquarePants characters and the like. It’s valued at $38,000. Justin
Favela’s works are commanding as much as $14,000 and Roberto Benavidez’s gorgeous birds
have been sold at undisclosed sums. Kyung Woo Han’s “Silent Piñata,” made of sponge and
Styrofoam, is also listed, though no piñata in its traditional form is.

28
CHAPTER 8: 2023 AND BEYOND
The piñata is such a part of culture that it will be enshrined in the most American of
ways — as a U.S. postage stamp.
Seattle-based artist Victor Melendez designed two variations of a “Forever” stamp to be
released in the second half of 2023: one, the seven-pointed star; and the other, a burro piñata.
“I've never not been involved with the piñata,” Melendez said from his Washington home. “I
grew up in Mexico, so ever since I remember, there were piñatas — and not only during
birthdays, but also during the holiday season.”
The United States Postal Service
receives about 30,000 suggestions for stamp
subjects every year, according to Senior Public
Relations Representative Jim McKean. The
Citizen Stamp Advisory Committee, a group
appointed by the Postmaster General,
recommends subjects. Piñatas had been
submitted for several years and in 2019
received the go-ahead for production.
Piñatas have an official stamp of
approval from the USPS, and now there’s momentum building at art institutions for inclusivity
that extends beyond "traditional" classifications and genres.
Figure 14: Piñata "Forever" stamps. Image courtesy United
States Postal Service.
29
“The good news is because of the racial reckoning of 2020 and the ongoing critique of
racist monuments, and because of the decolonize museum movement, institutions — libraries
and museums — are rethinking harmful content,” said the University of Minnesota’s Davalos.
“The aboutness of a record is put into play by a human being. It's not a neutral thing. It's a
subjective thing. Even when you have standards, they reflect their time periods.”
The time is right for piñatas to sit alongside other sculptural forms in museum
collections, free from craft or folk designations. Art institutions have a central platform,
Mexican American Art Since 1848, to update identifiers in cataloging systems. Any archival
concerns about a piñata’s fading tissue paper or storage requirements can receive the same
consideration given to works such as Pablo Picasso's cardboard drawings and guitar sculptures,
also made with everyday materials.
Above all, the people crafting piñatas are artists and should be considered as such.
“When you look at how a real piñatero does the papier-mache, curls the tissue paper to
form a sculpture, essentially they’re ephemeral sculptures,” said the Smithsonian’s Nunn. “Who
else can do that out of cardboard, newspaper and paste?”
30
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agsten, Allison. Interview by Sofia M. Fernandez, December 12, 2022.
Battle, Chester. Email correspondence with Sofia M. Fernandez, March 22, 2023.
Benavidez, Diana. Interview by Sofia M. Fernandez, November 14, 2022.
Benavidez, Roberto. Interview by Sofia M. Fernandez, February 3, 2023.
Davalos, Karen Mary. Interview by Sofia M. Fernandez, February 5, 2023.
Favela, Justin. Interview by Sofia M. Fernandez, February 18, 2023.
Gachot, Sarah Bey. Interview by Sofia M. Fernandez, November 21, 2022.
Gomez, Rebecca. Interview by Sofia M. Fernandez, December 28, 2022.
Gurulé, Jadira. Interview by Sofia M. Fernandez, December 29, 2022.
Jones, David. “The ghetto families on 10p an hour making party gifts for Kate's mum's £30
million business empire,” Daily Mail, February 22, 2013.

Kansas State Historical Society, “Traditions: Piñata,” Kansapedia, 1993.
McKean, Jim. Interview by Sofia M. Fernandez, November 10, 2022.
Melendez, Victor. Interview by Sofia M. Fernandez, December 2, 2022.
National Museum of Mexican Art, didactic from “Surrounding Kahlo: Works from the
Permanent Collection,” Rubin & Paula Torres Gallery, March 5, 2022 - January 15, 2023.

Nunn, Tey Marianna. Interview by Sofia M. Fernandez, February 1, 2023.
Picado García, José Daniel. Interview by Sofia M. Fernandez, November 24, 2022.
Robletto, Lorena. Interview by Sofia M. Fernandez, November 11, 2022.
Rodríguez, Isaías. Interview by Sofia M. Fernandez, October 29, 2022.
Rosof, Libby, “Politics of a Different Color,” Artblog, August 30, 2004.
Ruiz-Healy, Patricia. Interview by Sofia M. Fernandez, January 20, 2023.
31
Thelmadatter, Leigh, “Originally Mesoamerican, the piñata keeps evolving through the
centuries,” Mexico News Daily, December 15, 2021.

Zaiden, Emily. Interview by Sofia M. Fernandez, October 26, 2021.
Zaiden, Emily. “Piñatas - The High Art of Celebration” opening reception remarks, Mingei
International Museum, October 29, 2022.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract The piñata is a treasured aspect of life in the Americas, signifying celebration at birthday parties and other special occasions. But lost in its ubiquity is the acknowledgment of the craft and effort that went into its creation. The piñata does not exist without human hands bringing it to life.

The piñata has evolved into its own art form — one that is recognized at museums and galleries throughout the United States. This thesis follows the piñata beyond its capacity at backyard gatherings to its status as an art object. Interviews with artists, curators, academics and museum staff provide history and context of its role in contemporary art. A review of prominent works explores various interpretations of the craft, its materials and the social critiques and statements that can take shape through the innocuous form.

As an art object, the piñata challenges Eurocentric classifications and dares institutional gatekeepers to embrace an accessible genre that could inspire new generations of artists and art lovers. The piñata is Latinidad to its core: welcoming, evolving and undeniably worldly.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Fernandez, Sofia M. (author)

Core Title The art of the piñata

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Specialized Journalism (The Arts)

Degree Conferral Date 2023-05

Publication Date 04/28/2023

Defense Date 04/27/2023

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag archive,art,art history,catalogue,Chicano studies,collection,Commerce,contemporary art,craft,Design,display,ephemeral,exhibit,exhibition,fine art,Folk art,gallery,Graphics,high art,Industry,installation,Materials,OAI-PMH Harvest,palo,Paper,Papier-mache,pedestal,permanent collection,piñata,Piñatas,piñatera,piñatero,Sculpture,Show,stamps,tissue paper,vessel

Format theses (aat)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Garza, Oscar (committee chair), Plocek, Keith (committee member), Seidenberg, Willa (committee member)

Creator Email smfern@yahoo.com,smfernan@usc.edu

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