Chang, Nicholas (Week 8)

 When looking at all the presentations from our class last week, I believe that Armando’s presentation on Brenda Barrios was the most interesting to me. It was very interesting to hear about a fellow Bruin and their work as an artist and I am very happy to see Armando choose someone from our student community to highlight their work. 

I personally believed that Barrios’ topics and themes that were heavily involved with activism and drawing attention to important issues was a very admirable trait of her artwork. The activism aspect of Chicana art is heavily prevalent in pieces such as “Medicare for All” and “Vaccines for the Community”.  In the piece “Medicare for All”, we can see a Chicana lady that is meant to resemble Barrios’ mother with a broom surrounded by colorful leaves. The art piece showcases a population that desperately needs access to good health care and demonstrates that activist side of art and how art can potentially change minds with a single powerful image. Especially since the Latino community has very little access to healthcare, this message is important to draw attention to a demographic that has been hit especially hard from the pandemic. Being a little biased because of my political leanings, this piece was particularly powerful as I believe that we need to do more as a country to provide good healthcare to those that have been disproportionately affected by a lack of healthcare for so long. 

Through Armando’s presentation, I also learned about how the colors that Brenda chose were purposeful as they represented the colors she had seen in Mexico. Looking at Brenda Barrios’ art, I could see the comparisons between Brenda’s digital art to the papel picado we have seen used by artists throughout this course. 

In conclusion, I believe that Armando’s presentation was very informative and perfectly encapsulated Brenda Barrios’ style as well as her inspiration behind her pieces.