What do Jesus, Alice in Wonderland, and a military helicopter have in common? They all make a cameo in this confusing Enrique Chagoya painting.

Does it leave you feeling befuddled? Perplexed? To be sure, there’s an absurd vibe here that may have you doing a double take. Through his characteristic use of caricature and surprising pop cultural iconography, Chagoya coaxes us to think about the tension between secular, military, and creative forces (hence a flamingo-wielding Alice and her dodo going head to head with Jesus’s chopper. Make sense?).

As Chagoya explains about this work, “Political roadmaps are just ideological constructions, just more borders. In history, maps and borders – including internal borders among people – are always changing.”

The tongue-in-cheek sense of humor that you see here began to manifest when Chagoya was a little scamp; he claims he used to amuse himself by drawing his teachers naked. "I have a cartoonist's mind,” he says. “Most of the time I don't try to convince people about any idea. I have thoughts I have to express somewhere, and sometimes they make me laugh. That's when I know I have to do something with them."

The piece at the Oakland Museum is a painting, but Chagoya produced a similar work as a jacquard tapestry for well-reputed Oakland print shop Magnolia Editions. The text on the bottom of this image, which cryptically reads “An object whose identity is not recalled whose existence is indelibly marked,” is unique to the painting.