Justin Favela has re-created lowriders, landscapes, and canonical works of art using materials associated with piñatas. Now the Las Vegas-born artist has translated his exuberant visual language into something considerably more “poppy.”
The city dedicated Favela’s "Las Tres Flores" on Sept. 1 at 2500 Sunrise Ave. The sculpture features three towering metal Las Vegas bear poppies and one bud emerging from blue-green leaves. Rocks at the base evoke the terrain where the rare wildflower grows and the mountains framing the Eastside.
The subject suits an artist who has spent his career reconsidering what belongs in museums, which materials deserve to be called fine art, and whose version of the American West receives monumental treatment.
Favela draws on his queer Guatemalan-Mexican American identity, Las Vegas upbringing, family celebrations, pop culture, and art history. His large-scale installations often use layers of cut paper and cardboard to transform the visual language of piñatas into landscapes and immersive environments.
That combination of exuberance and critique has carried his work far beyond Las Vegas. "Capilla de Maíz," his chapel-like installation with shimmering gold-fringed walls and monumental piñata corncobs, remains on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C., through Sept. 7.
Favela also documents the community around him through the "Art People Podcast," interviewing local artists, including Ramirez, Hernandez, and Uranda, about how their work intersects with family, culture, and life in Las Vegas.
But "Las Tres Flores" belongs specifically to East Las Vegas. It places a monumental work by a nationally recognized artist in a residential neighborhood rather than behind a casino entrance or museum admission desk.
