Chicana Printmakers: Yolanda M. López & Favianna Rodriguez

I found this article to be very crucial to the analysis of the presence and artwork of Chicanas both during and after the Movimiento of the 1960s and 1970s. Crucial to their work is their identity construction while simultaneously confirming their territory, as well as their self-reflection in the contexts of invisibility, ethnocentrism and historical and patriarchal and sexual struggles. These subjectivities have been formulated throughout both the arts of literature and visual arts. Without precedents many artists paved the way yet this isn't to be taken lightly as though it wasn't challenging. Much earlier works focused on historical figures, archetypal women suffering at the hands of violent political and domestic patriarchy, coalition building with other Latin American countries, and religious symbols and iconography. Over time artists explored further, leaving behind archetypal renditions and depicting themselves. Chicana artists including Yreina Cervantez, Ester Hernández, and Yolanda M. López have actually created self-portraits by reappropriating iconographies.

Yolanda M. López' piece The Artist as the Virgin of Guadalupe depicts herself as la Virgen, yet liberated from the crescent moon pedestal and actively on a run. Here she is defiantly replacing the innocent, saintly Virgen with herself and making the statement that all women are worthy to be looked up to for their own beauty, talents and agency.

My artist this quarter was Favianna Rodriguez and she is a huge advocate from a feminist and leftist perspective. She employs printmaking as a tactic for social change. The issues she emphasizes in her work are those on immigration, women's sexual rights, racism, war, and labor practices. Although a Chicana artist whose messages have been straightforward, Chicana artists in the early seventies employed similar tactics with their calendar publications depicting the struggles of women with regards to physical and emotional abuse as well as political suffering in Central America. In this era Chicana artists had yet to depict themselves in their works and were exploring ways to represent women's struggles visually.

I find this article to be crucial to exposing and legitimizing the critical yet overlooked past of Chicana printmakers. I feel that this type of academic writing is paving the way for mujeres to be both recognized and admired.

My own nuclear family is shaped by gender roles and expectations. Growing up and learning about other cultures I've become more open to other ideologies and have explored my own freedom, often times at odds with my parents. I know right from wrong yet I also recognize that I have the right to make my own choices independent of what other's want of me. So with that being said, I can connect and I can imagine how challenging it must have been for Chicanas in the 1960s and 1970s who were constantly struggling for their own rights and voices in the Movimiento. I think this course is very important and I'm glad I was able to explore the artistic explorations, expressions, activism and liberations of Chicana artists.