Chicana Printmakers: Diane Gamboa

Holly Barnet-Sanchez explores the ways in which many Chicana print makers created a voice for many during the Chicano Civil Rights Movement. Barnet-Sanchez focuses on specific Chicana artists and the ways in which their work not only helped shape a movement but also crossed other topics of importance such as the relationship between gender, art and politics. Barnet-Sanchez mentions Diane Gamboa’s art as “bizarre, postapocalyptic, punk-baroque interior spaces are populated by equally bizarre men and women and not-quite-human creatures, even monstrosities, who appear more like cutouts inserted in a collage than actors on a stage or people in a room.” The way that Barnet-Sanchez explains Gamboa’s art is the exact same feelings and thoughts that I had while looking at her art. Gamboa’s inspiration for her art, as Barnet-Sanchez states came from her ideas of gender-bending qualities of body work. I appreciate Gamboa’s work because she looks at the body as a body, a body free from labels and a body that is free to also explore sexualities. She is able to transform the human body into a piece of art as well by making it look like the rest of its surroundings. Gamboa’s art puts forth a good question, what is gender? And who has the power to shift the roles?