Tia Juana's Bible, 2009, charcoal on wall, 147 x 235 inches

Objective Affection
BOFFO
Brooklyn Heights, New York
Fall 2009

Objective Affection, presented by BOFFO with directors/curators Faris Al-Shathir and Gregory Sparks. Objective Affection is an exhibition concerned with the influence of objects in contemporary culture, showcasing over 90 artists and designers in a 14,000 sq ft. former Jehovah's Witness Bible Printing Factory on the waterfront in Brooklyn Heights.

Tia Juana's Bible, 2009, charcoal on wall, 147 x 235 inches

In this work, Hugo Crosthwaite draws his inspiration from the infamous Tijuana Bibles (also known as bluesies, eight-pagers, gray-backs, Jiggs-and-Maggie books, jo-jo books, Tillie-and-Mac books, two-by-fours and fuck books) which were pornographic comic books produced in the United States from the 1920s to the early 1960s.

Unlike the original Tijuana bibles which were 4 by 6 inches with black printing on cheap white paper and eight pages long, Crosthwaite has elevated his image to a monumental size and immortalized it's characters on a permanent wall. Making a reference to the financial circumstances of these economic times, the popularity of the original erotic comics peaked during the Great Depression era when people looked for a strong and often sexually deviant diversion to their state of poverty. The subjects were explicit sexual escapades usually featuring well known cartoon characters, political figures or movie stars, invariably used without permission.

Tijuana bibles like Crosthwaite's Tia Juana's Bible references and satirizes the ethnic stereotypes found in popular culture. In most cases, the artists, writers and publishers of these tracts are unknown... unlike this artist who is poised to be very much in the spotlight.