By Claire Yacoboski
When artist Eamon Ore-Giron first heard the term “double groove” from punk band Total Shutdown, it struck him not just as a compelling aspect of music—but as a metaphor for identity itself. On a vinyl record, a double groove means that two separate songs exist side by side, and the listener never knows which one they’ll hear when they drop the needle. This unpredictability mirrors the movement of culture itself, Ore-Giron said at UC Santa Barbara last week.
“It spoke to me in terms of the idea of transnationalism in art and in identity, and in the ways in which culture moves, and music moves across borders and through culture,” he said in a talk that was part of the Art Department’s Visiting Artist Speaker Series. “Music doesn't just stop somewhere, it keeps going.”
Ore-Giron’s collaborative work as half of Los Jaichackers with Julio Morales, is currently on display at UCSB’s AD&A Museum, as part of the Public Texts: A Californian Visual Language exhibit.
Artist Eamon Ore-Giron tells a UCSB audience about the significance of the “double groove” in his art. Ore-Giron compiled the album Saturno 2000: La Rebajada de los Sonideros, using psychedelic music that came from Latin America.
Born in Arizona to Peruvian and Irish-American parents, Ore-Giron’s work is deeply informed by his dual heritage and the transnational flow of artistic traditions. It extends beyond painting, to music, performance, and video art. In the early 2000s, he formed the collaborative project Los Jaichackers with Morales, an initiative that blended sound, visual art, and performance. Under the alias DJ Lengua, he released Cruzando (2010), an album evoking the experience of crossing borders—sonically and conceptually.
At the San Francisco Art Institute, he studied under painter and visual artist Carlos Villa, who urged him to explore themes and divergent cultures that were excluded from traditional art history and the education system. This way of thinking led Ore-Giron to Peru.
“I was in search of my own artistic DNA,” said Ore-Giron, “trying to see what I can uncover. What kind of history wasn't in those books, that I wasn't seeing?” Peru is where he learned from painter Josue Sanchez, renowned for capturing the harsh daily lives of miners with a colorful palette. These experiences cemented Ore-Giron’s fascination with cultural hybridity, a theme that recurs throughout his work.
A statue of Aztec goddess, Coatilicue, one of artist Eamon Ore-Giron’s muses for his Talking Shit series that utilizes painting, textiles, and murals (2017-2024).
His painting, mural, and textile series Talking Shit (2017-2024) engages with ancient artifacts and deconstructs how history assigns value to objects over time. In Talking Shit with Coatlicue (2017), he reimagines the Aztec goddess, Coatlicue, whose sculpture was once buried out of colonial fear after the Spanish conquest. It was later rediscovered, and eventually appreciated as an artistic masterpiece. “Coatlicue went from being a goddess to a monster to a masterpiece,” the artist said.
Similarly, his gold-leaf works, such as Infinite Regress LXXXII (2019), reference Peruvian artifacts, exploring gold’s spiritual and economic significance across centuries. “When an artist uses gold as a medium, it imbues the painting with that history.”
Ore-Giron said he values collaboration and experimentation. His recent set design for the ballet Mystic Familiar with the New York City Ballet (2025) embodies the essence of the "double groove"—fluid, changing, and open to reinterpretation.
He seeks to challenge the rigid structures of the fine art world, embracing a more DIY, music-infused ethos. “Fine art was more distant. You had to go to the places with wine and cheese, and I never really identified with that,” he said. “Music was always easier.”
Whether through vinyl grooves, animated canvases, or historical artifacts reimagined, he insists that history, identity, and artistic expression are never singular nor static. For Ore-Giron art is not a fixed entity but a constantly shifting conversation, an echo that ricochets between cultures and generations.
“I like the idea that art is almost like a cultural reverb–things bouncing off each other and moving forward,” he said.
Claire Yacoboski is a fourth-year UC Santa Barbara majoring in Communication. She is a Web and Social Media intern with the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.