Eduardo Robles grew up in Pico Union around a diasporic Zapotec and Oaxacan Los Angeles scene in the 1980s. He attended Brown University for his Master’s in 2014 and developed a persona named the Cosmic Zapotec after discovering the 1960s performance artist and designer the Mystic Mexican at RISD Archives. He speaks about partaking in various underground cultural scenes and off-campus groups in the 2000s. He discusses dissociation and withdrawal as a subaltern strategy, in addition to institutional fatigue as a cultural worker. He elaborates on literary embodiment as an antidote to cultural contingency, hyper-normalization, and co-optation, for which he launched a gathering of LA-born Latinx artists and designers into an exhibit-making and book arts collective.
The conversation with Eduardo Robles occurred over dinner. I was already familiar with several topics discussed which he elaborated further on such as his father being a gardener and now at a private girl’s school is Hancock Park and the Latinx initiative which he had recently started.
- Hailey Loman, November 25, 2018