Blog 7: Presentations

Of the presentations on Chicana artists, the one that stood out to me was the Chicana photographer Laura Aguilar. Her work represented a lot of her struggles, but through the nudity exposed it also reveals the reality of womanhood without subjecting the body to ideals. All of photographs we saw of her were layered with multiple meanings. The setting of her photographs, alone, holds an intimate relationship to her memories of trips to these national parks with her family.

Although most of her images are set in national parks, the image that stood out me the most was actually one that was most likely set in a studio with a black backdrop aside two flags titled Three Eagles Flying. Here, she stands in between the American flag and the Mexican flag, but then she has a Mexican Flag wrapped around her face and head and an American flag around her waist with a rope tied around her neck and body. To me this reveals the what we have discussed in class about the concept of having a cultural duality and the struggles of that balancing that duality. The fact that the American flag is lower on her body, around her waist, makes me think that she is grounded in the Unites States. The fact that her face and head are covered by the Mexican flag signifies that she has automatically been label her as “Mexican”. The rope around her neck and body is directly related to the struggle and maybe the injustices that she experiences for being a Mexican-American. But I believe it is also a commentary on the limitation of being labeled Mexican-American when as human beings we are more than just one or two single things. This image is very politically charged and it exposes the idea of a mexican being an illegal person who must be hung. It makes the audience member want to respond with Yolanda Lopez’ Who’s The Illegal Alien, Pilgrim?. It reflects the discrimination of being labeled Mexican in the United States, but also it dehumanizes the person by not revealing the face.