Yvette Mayorga's monumental sculpture "Magic Grasshopper" has been installed outside the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, Florida. The thirty-foot pink carriage, adorned with white horses, luggage, and piped acrylic frosting-like details, draws on the Nahuatl word "chapultepec" (hill of the grasshopper) and references Mexico City's Castillo de Chapultepec, the imperial residence of the Second Mexican Empire. Mayorga describes her practice as "Latinxoco," a fusion of Latinx and Rococo, exploring maximalism, colonial history, and transcultural exchange while honoring her family's migration from Jalisco, Mexico, to Chicago.
The work matters because it brings a playful yet intellectually layered public sculpture to a major museum, engaging with Latinx histories, diaspora, and the legacy of colonialism through a visually accessible, joyful form. Mayorga's "Latinxoco" framework offers a fresh aesthetic theory that connects royal French and Mexican court traditions with contemporary Latinx identity, making complex historical narratives tangible and inviting for a broad audience.