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‘Cholafied’ Turns Celebrities into Mexican Gang Divas

By admin on October 18, 2014

Angelina Jolie – The Billy Bob Years

Chola Mark Zuckerberg aka Daddy Nobucks

Jay Z aka Chola HOVA – Kim K Sit Yo @ss Down

For Cholafied, Los Angeles-based artist and advertising student Michael Jason Enriquez transforms celebrities into 1990s street gang divas.

The term “chola,” once used within a degrading lexicon, has in the past decades been reappropriated by young Mexican American women who adhere to particular tenants of street style: thin, drawn-on eyebrows, heavily coifed hair, bold lipliner, facial piercings, tattoos, and according to Urban Dictionary, “that don’t give a **ck attitude.”

From RuPaul’s Drag Race to high-end fashion brand Rodarte, the chola has served as a modern muse, carrying with her all the nostalgia of the 1990s. Enriquez takes this trend further, imbuing everyone from Anne Hathaway to Mitt Romney with a hefty dose of chola-style charm. For him, Cholafied is a hodgepodge of Los Angeles subcultures, a nod to a city where gang life and celebrity exist side-by-side.

Los Angeles in the 1990s had no small part in shaping his adolescence, and in his eyes, the Hollywood glitterati and the gang kids lead parallel lives. Both are exalted and idolized only to be torn down with every passing rumor. He explains of the hottest A-Listers, “We basically jump these people into this fame gang.” For this reason, Enriquez often chooses scandalized celebrities for his one-of-a-kind make-overs. “The captions I write for them usually refer to the cultural beating they are going through,” he tells Feature Shoot.

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