Prints by Jose Guadalupe Posada.

       The collective artistic efforts of Chicanas comes together in Holly Barnet-Sanchez's Where Are the Chicana Printmakers? for the exhibit Just Another Poster? Chicano Graphics in California. Barnet-Sanchez focuses on the rich body of prints made by Chicanas. Prints are among the most promient medium in Chiana/o art, and can be traced back to a Mexico. The works of Jose Guadalupe Posada at the dawn of the Mexican Revolution popularized printmaking as a political media. Messages were transmitted quickly through reproductions, and the prints also communicated with broad spectrums of society through a visual language. I feel that this rich history of printmaking in Mexico may have contributed to the conversation of Chicana prints in Barnet-Sanchez's work.

Diane Gamboa, Revelation, Revolution, 2002.

              Revelation Revolution (Right) by Diane Gamboa produced in 2002, a few years after the prints discussed by Barnet-Sanchez, continues a printmaking tradition. Gamboa creates a highly stylized portrait of two central figures, with an outline of a third in the background. Adorning the two central figures are flowers, vibrantly roused lips paint their faces, with perfectly pinned and curled hair set in place, and their tattooed bodies harmonize with the natural elements in the composition. This print is a celebration of the body, both male and female. Even the facial features attribute them as androgynous. The female aura, a quality that surrounds them, is completely divorced from Posada’s figures of the Vigren de Guadalupe (Above), that is merely a static icon. Yet similarly, the content of Gamboa's work challenges social norms in the same way that Posada's prints critiqued the social and political upheaval in Mexico at the turn of the early 20th Century. Prints have withstood time, and continue to develop as a medium of choice for Chiacana/o art.