Presentation: Angélica Becerra

Although all of the artist that were presented this past week were great and admirable, the artist that interested me the most was Angélica Becerra. My classmate mentioned during her presentation that Becerra is a PHD Latina student at UCLA who has a strong drive to succeed. She grew up with her close family learning how to paint. I felt that her message was very powerful due to the fact that she emphasis on the idea of empowering women of color and also shows how culture should be respected.

One of the image that my classmate presented was "I Carry Resilience En La Frente". In specific, I loved this image because not only does it embrace our roots, but she transforms something negative into something positive. This "something negative" would be the stereotypic way of relating a person of color to being hispanic. In other words, when someone says "tienes el nopal en la frente," it simply means that because you are dark you are Hispanic and therefore you should know how to speak Spanish. The fact that Becerra is able to give this stereotype a twist into something positive amazed me because in a way, she has described the resistance and the struggles that POC have to overcome when coming to this country. Not only that, but by including nopales, I was able to immediately think about my roots and culture.