Banuet, Haziel (Week Seven)

In the piece “Chicanx Graphics in the Digital Age” written by Claudia Zapata, we read how the digital revolution of the 1980s impacted Chicanx artists and how the art form became an accessible tool for more artists. This piece highlights the few out of many artists who took it upon themselves to understand this new medium and use it as a form of dialogue. The main argument that older generations of artists feared with the entrance of digital art in the scene was that it would decrease the value and purpose of art. But Zapata’s main argument in this piece is that the emergence of digital art did not erase the traditional art forms (especially those in the Chicanx community, rather it opened new doors of advocacy. Digital art is an accessible art form that can reach new audiences, especially when protesting injustice.

Zapata also writes about how digital art impacted and influenced the community of Chicanx artists and the definitions Chicanx artists have expanded on because of the art medium. We learn that Barbara Carrasco was one of the first artists to incorporate digital media in her work in the 1980s. Her piece was a Spectacolor lightboard that was part of the United Farm Worker (UFW) grape boycott. Her piece serves as an example of how artists began to use digital art to publicize political issues to a broader audience. There were many more artists that Zapata wrote about in this piece, but I thought it was very interesting how Carrasco created a simple illustration to speak on such an important issue that had been going on in the Chicanx community.