Avila, Andrew (Xandra Ibarra/ La Chica Boom)

         Xandra Ibarra, perhaps better known as La Chica Boom, is an Oakland based ‘interdisciplinary’ artist, born and raised near the U.S./Mexico border between El Paso and Juarez. Ibarra’s work crosses a multitude of media including: performance, video, sculpture, etc., and seeks to address abjection and joy while contemplating, and challenging the borders between proper and improper racialized, gendered, and queer subjects. The specific work I chose to address by Ibarra/la Chica Boom, is her She’s On the Rag series, which features Ibarra’s own menstrual emissions. A collection of emissions from between 2013 and 2020, the series consists of Ibarra’s menstrual emissions, which she has cast into abstract shapes that are left for the viewer to interpret. What’s perhaps even more interesting regarding this series is that Ibarra sold these prints online from 2015 to 2020, and even went as far as to offer a psychodynamic analysis video of what these images evoke in their respective viewers. 

While Ibarra is a champion among many categories of art, she is well known for creating contreversial feminist art; pushing the boundaries of what contemporary art could and should be. That being said, I found her She's On the Rag series pretty uncomfortable, and very controversial. The thought of using bodily fluids to produce art is very surprising to me, though I understand Ibarra is not the first female artist to do so. That being said, I knew that I wanted to discuss this series of hers specifically because it made me uncomfortable. I find that this is a primary goal of Ibarra’s Shes On the Rag series, not to make viewers wildy uncomfortable by providing them something grotesque to view, but rather to provide them with something that challenges their perception of what contemporary art is. I think Ibarra’s work definitely achieves this goal, even if few people agree with, or support it. While I still don't quite understand how I feel about this specific series of hers, I do know that it's important that art is made that challenges our perceptions of what is acceptable, and who deems it acceptable. I think artists like Ibarra are crucial for the survival and future of art, and for that I can appreciate her series She's On the Rag.