Alana Derksen is a 27-year-old mixed media artist who released her first solo book “Tail Between My Legs” in 2017 with LA-based publisher Paper Work. Derksen’s newest project “Alejandro” documents her summer-long trip to Mexico City where she spent her time in Tepito, the cities most notoriously lawless neighbourhood. Tepito’s open-air market is commonly known as “the world's most dangerous black market” because of its reputation as a hangout for thieves, sex workers, and drug dealers while being predominantly operated by the narco cartel. “Alejandro” documents young men in the Sureños 13 Mexican Mafia, Anti-Fascist Skinheads, Santa Muerte street festivals, and the people that make up the community. During her stay, Derksen spent several days with an elderly widow who runs Tepito's most infamous Santa Muerte altar where she was taught how followers praise the saint and bless her worshipers. La Santa Muerte (Saint Death) is often referred to as a narco-saint. Drug cartels feel La Santa Muerte protects her followers from law enforcement, military, and other rival cartels. The shrines usually include sacrifices, which can include tequila, money, lines of cocaine, or blood that they give to the patron saint. To her followers, Santa Muerte is a powerful healer, a bringer of prosperity, and an agent of vengeance. Worshippers commonly ask her for green cards, safety as a sex worker, health, protection against violence, immigration agents, and punishment against rival gangs. Catholic bishops often warn against this dangerous Satanic ‘perversion of devotion’. In addition to her own photographs, Alana includes collages of imagery taken from the local newspapers collected during her trip to show the lack of censorship and desensitization to violence in Mexican media.
Edition of 50, 46 pages, 8” x 10”
