Rivera, Miranda Ynez Botello

Hola! My name is Miranda. I am a senior getting a degree in art history. I transferred to UCLA with an AA in Fine Arts and have been in college for the past five years. On my spare time, I am musician in the band called RIVOAH and a muralist in East LA known as YNEZ.  My art consists of ceramic making, embroidery, as well as large scale wall pieces that depict contemporary abstract expressionism with chicana illustration of everyday iconography. I want to get an art history degree to develop curriculum on Mural Development as well as teach the youth, or anyone interested in Muralism, the process on how to go about creating large scale works as well as the history of contemporary Muralism. Currently I am a curatorial intern at the Hammer Museum working on the Getty's Pacific Standard Time's: Los Angeles/Latin America- Radical Womyn of Latin America exhibition. My whole life I have been surrounded by art and artists. As the niece of David and Paul Botello (East Los Street-Scrapers), they have taught and influenced me about what it means to be a chican@ artist growing up in a heavily influenced eurocentric-western culture.  Coming from a family of artists, my goal is to continue their footsteps as time passes and hopefully create a more beautiful Los Angeles. With contemporary Chicana/o art on all the walls in the surrounding L.A area, we can be the city with the largest Latin American public display of art on its streets. We need to be recognized on the streets as well as create a public institution to display people of colors art on the walls because art is for everyone regardless of the status of their society and hopefully in the future I can make this goal come true.

In the article, "There's No Place Like Aztlan: Embodied Aesthetic in Chicana Art" there is this notion that Aztlan is seen as the homeland of Chicana/o's, but there is this gender division. This is shown as women are used as an object and are not capable of contributing to the Chicano movement. This is what stuck out to me the most because of the female identities we have to accept in today's society. As a chicana, there are roles many Latina womyn have to grow up with, such as this sense of purity and if you break it, you are considered a "whore". Chicana artists use female sexuality as a powerful tool, but how can we display it in a contemporary matter that help the youth understand that their sexuality does not have to be explained to any one?

In the essay, "Out of the House, the Halo, and the Whore's Mask: The Mirror of Malinchismo", Gaspar introduces the different types of feminist from the past and from today's time. There is this sense that Chicano's are more equal than Chicana's and this demonstrates the constant struggle of Chicana artsists and having to receive recognition in the art community. This stuck out to me the most because as a chicana artist, I am the only womyn in the Botello family that took the artistic direction. It is hard to be considered an artist to the public coming from a family who are mostly male because I am not really taken seriously. How can young womyn of color today look past this notion of internalized forms of oppression with their artwork if we are not being recognized to begin with?