Week 8 Presentations Laura Aguilar

Last week during presentation many classmates showed the many sides of famous and up and coming Chicana artists. Last week the artist that stood out to me the most was Laura Aguilar. Laura Aguilar's photographs were interesting and striking. Throughout the presentation, my fellow classmate displayed a new way of looking at the body through the use larger bodies to the art world sphere. From mimicking the land while nude to transgressive art making Laura Aguilar’s art paved the way for new strategies and executions. From the presentation, the artwork that stood out to me was the “How Mexican is Mexican.” Through this piece and the title alone, this piece exploits one’s self-identity as a Mexican. This piece was a triptych involving three photographs of women, each separated by borders, containing a quote by the person in the photograph and each having 4 thermometers at the bottom. The quotes explain how each person in the pictures feel towards their own identities of being of Mexican descent while the thermometers display temperatures signifying their connections to their Mexican roots. In this case the higher the temperature, the more connected the person in the picture feels connected to her Mexican roots. I choose this picture and artist because it made me question how high my thermometers would be. From being judged from being too Mexican from racist locals to being called not "Mexican enough" from some family members, I feel that my identity is one of kind but made from the roots made by the people who raised me, and their roots are also of Mexican descent.

Presentation: Barbara Carrasco

After last week’s presentations, I realized that there is larger community of female artist, but more specifically Chicana artist. Some of the presentations really showed me the diversity of styles and backgrounds of Chicana Artist and the movement taking place to increase popularity and real representation of the Chicana Experience. The one that stood out to me the most was the one of Barbara Carrasco, presented by Amy Perez. Just like Amy, I also did my presentation on an artist who we leaned about in class. Though we did learn a lot about Carrasco, I chose this presentation for my blog because I feel that Amy had a lot more to offer as she presented a part from what he have learned in lecture. The image that stood out the most was “L.A. History: A Mexican Perspective, 1981”. Observing this mural more critically and closely, I did not realize how many historical and cultural symbols were in this mural. I also liked this image because, it marks a time of censorship of Chicano and Los Angeles History in favor of the dominant culture. I did not realize which parts and motifs from the mural needed censorship. During Amy’s presentation I did not know that there was a piece of the mural focusing on the camps that were made to house Asian based families during times of war. These little things is what I found fascinating during the presentation, and what I hope to accomplish when it is my turn to present.

Judith F Baca - Killed by a Placa

           Lopez analyzes Baca's productions and cultural output during her key roles in working with communities of cultural diversity. Baca provides a unique opportunity to reconsider the terms of public art social practice and community muralism as they have been addressed in relation to the international contemporary art of the Americas. Through the narrative of Lopez, one can embrace the political and aesthetic influence and depiction of contested histories and historical struggles and conflictive subjects. While Baca was expanding her feminist influence she explored the discomforting sides of male violence through iconography. Baca witnessed this type of gang warfare while working in East Los Angeles and Boyle Heights. In 1974, after witnessing this type of experience, she created a wood stain on paper piece called, Killed by a Placa. This piece portrays a man after being wounded lying on a curb of the sidewalk, with the words "17 yrs" on the curb, and "Toro WF" written on the man's face. Baca personal interaction with the morning of Jerry Fernandez, a member of her mural crew, impacted her emotionally to speak out against the systematic violence affecting the youth in her community(59). Seventeen-year-old Jerry Fernandez was shot in the head, in Whittier, while buying clothes for his new infant. The "Toro WF" graffiti on the man's face and symbolizes, Jerry's younger brother, Julio's street name Toro, and the gang Julio was affiliated, White Fence. Baca channeled her emotions to not only express her grief but also present a broader message targeting violence in inner-city streets as well as the endless cycle of violence and death in gang warfare.

Carmen Lomas Garza

       
At the age of thirteen, Carmen Lomas Garza decided to become a visual artist and just like Yolanda Lopez, she took advantage of every opportunity to advance her knowledge of art through higher education institutions. During the Chicano Movement of the late 1960s, Garza was inspired by her everyday life experiences in a Mexican American based community. Based on her memories and experiences in South Texas, Garza saw the need to display images that Mexican Americans would relate to, but at the same time serve as an educator to those not familiar with her culture. Carmen Lomas Garza’s main objective is to make paintings, prints, installations, paper, and metal cutouts that instill pride in of her culture. One of my favorite “folk” artworks of Mexican-American culture from Garza is La Tamalada. This piece was created in 1988, and depicts a brown family, working together to make tamales. La Tamalada portrays family members sharing the work, some members would be in charge of contributing in some way of making the tamales, and some members of the family would just keep each other company as their contribution. Other elements hanging on the walls such as The Last Supper, Dance calendars, and garlic knots break the barrier between the artist and the Mexican-American audience. This piece spoke out to me more than the others because of the resemblance between the painting, and the culture of my family. Just like Garza, I also share memories of being surrounded by family and upholding family traditions. This image, not only does a great job of portraying a real representation of traditional Mexican culture, but also encourages pride for one’s culture.

Yolanda M Lopez - The Nanny

In Karen Davalos's Yolanda M Lopez, the author explores a Chicana artist that grew up on the border and gained international recognition for her controversial use of popular icons in her artwork. As she grew as an artist, Lopez had an awareness of racial stereotyping and specific coexisting erasure of Mexican culture in the national narrative. The Nanny was an installation made in 1994, from Lopez’s Women's Work Is Never Done Series. On the left and right are advertisements portraying cultural appropriation and in the middle is a white folding screen hanging a nanny’s gray uniform. On the right side there is a brown woman bowing to a light skin brunette and on the left side, a dark-skinned woman holding a sombrero-like-hat with watermelon is in the shadow of a light skin woman. Through the deconstructionist approach, Lopez questions domestic labor, gender, cultural differences, and ethnicity. Davalos expands on the work and how this installation “depicts how White women in the ads appropriated and degraded Mexican culture and Mexican women." (79) Through the use of materials, Lopez identifies that Chicana women are seen only as laborers and creates stereotypes of Mexican culture and history for the dominant culture to use. Lopez understood the various social codes, such as gender, ethnicity, skin color, language, and nationality that work in conjunction with capitalism. Looking at this installation, I am reminded of two things, one being the stereotypical reality that most of the working Chicana women I have met in my life have been a nanny or maid at one point in their lives. The other thing I am reminded is that the dominant culture uses our oppression in their favor to promote their brand and superiority. It is up to us to speak our as a collective and say “that is not our Mexican culture.”

Alicia Gaspar de Alba's CARA's Politics of Representation

         In Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s CARA’s Politics of Representation, the misrepresentation of Chicana Artist and the Chicana aesthetic, can be viewed through various avenues, limiting gender roles, betraying cultural notions, and the struggles faced by women during the Chicano Art Movement. Throughout the reading Chicana women could be only seen as either, brides, mothers, and mistresses. During the movement, the liberation of men were ranked over the oppression of women, and though it was not wrong for women to want families and children these reproductive roles did not satisfy the price of subjugation placed on Chicana women. After finding the courage and the desire for liberation, Chicana women struggled in searching for their feminist identity. In lecture, Senora Alicia Gaspar de Alba stated, “If you adhere to feminist ways, you are betraying La Raza.” Through the artwork Las Tres Marias, Judith Francisca Baca, invokes wonder in the viewer by placing a mirror between what appeared to be two kinds of female identity in Chicanismo. Her piece places the viewer in the middle of the conflict between choosing to represent the stereotype of patriarchal culture, or self-affirmation through the social constructs built by others. The question, which is more directed towards women was, what did your image, your identity, bring to the gender codes in Chicano or Mexicano culture? In some reproductions, this piece gives the artist the opportunity to portray themselves in this triptych, as to undermine, defy, or to recode the female identity in the Chicano Art Movement. Through the illustrations and pieces of women in the Chicano Art Movement, feminists are given the opportunity to not only portray their gender limitations paced by their cultural counterparts, but to recode their own identities to fit their passions and desires.

Debra Blake's Chicana Sexuality and Gender

In Chapter 1, Blake not only introduces the cultural symbols as the builders that constructed the “women of discord”, but also considers the revising of Chicana perspective through a more reliable source. Blake states, “Like the women of discord, their narratives herald a new era of women of color power that has altered the historical record and recovered lost memories of resilient female symbols.” (16) Blake’s argument in this chapter originates from the misrepresentation of Mexican cultural symbols leading to the disorder of the present Chicana and U.S. Mexicana experience. Throughout history it is easy to see narratives of the past used as persuasion for the interest of dominant powers, but it could also be used as a tool for non-dominant people to construct overpowering beliefs. Mexican figures such as, La Virgen de Guadalupe and La Llorona can be portrayed highly and admired to envision their own spirit or the very thing they must resist. I choose this quote because I believe it best introduces the foundation of her main arguments in this section. The ideology behind the women of discord is not only strictly judged, but also a powerful tool that can be portrayed through different avenues. These displays can provide visualizations of the struggles not only faced by Chicana women but by all women, and how other displays of their history does not satisfy when its written by the other dominant group who want to keep women down.

Presentation: Ester Hernandez

I chose to write about Ester Hernandez because I have read many stories from families who grew up working on farms just to make a living for themselves and I find myself respecting these types of people for their resolve and relentless efforts. Her installations of pastels and prints depict the Latina/ Native women and the realism of the treatment of Chicanas in today’s real world. As a child, Ester Hernandez watched Chicano farm workers marched through her hometown of Dinuba, California. Witnessing the harassment from the local residents, she and her family, greeted the workers as well as their leader Cesar Cháves. While her time in Grove Street College in Oakland, California, her interest involved Chicano Studies, but quickly turned towards Art as an outlet for her emotions. She used her art to portray her anger towards the treatment of women, especially Chicano Women. Hernandez met and joined Rupert Garcia’s classes in San Francisco, there she was invited to enter a Latina women’s’ art exhibition. Her work over her time using art as an outlet has been controversial. Her famous Sun Mad, focuses on her realization on the dangers of growing grapes for the raisin industry. She had worked as a farmhand herself, and after thinking it over she thought it best to transform the Sun Maid to expose the truths behind the, “wholesome figures of agribusiness.” She evolved the famous Sun Maid image to depict the anger and fear of what might happen to her family, her community, and herself. I believe her work not only exploits the harsh conditions of the working Latinx but the struggles Chicanas face socially, politically and spiritually.

Aguillon, Rafael(Rafa)

Hello class, my name is Rafael Aguillon, but y’all can call me Rafa. I am a fourth-year majoring in Statistics with an interest in data analysis. I identify as a Mexican-American male, and my preferred pronouns are he/his/him. Though I do side more with “South Campus” material, I decided to take this class because I am rather shy and mediocre at Art but have a strong sense of pride for my Chicano heritage. Not only would this class give me an opportunity to exercise my culture, but also help me grow confidence to expose my creative side in a more public setting.

Today, metaphorical and physical walls are reinforced by the mindsets of past ideologies. We can see this in our schools, our communities and even in our own daily news. Before attacking the problems, we face today, individually or as a collective, we must know what question we are trying to answer. When reading Linda Nochlin’s essay, I also asked myself what kind of obstacles women had to deal with when facing the disadvantages set by the predominately white male custom. Through a Chicana perspective, more challenges also sprung from the very movement they are taking part in. I also agreed a lot with what Sybil Venega had to say, looking at my own family as an example, I witnessed how it was normal for gender to determine your role. Although Chicana’s were faced with these struggles, I saw how the women in my family, overcame the roles they were assigned by past ideologies by succeeding in predominately male roles, as the breadwinners and heads of their households. If we desire to make progressive steps towards a better tomorrow, we must detach ourselves from the chains of these past ideologies set by others who put us in a disadvantage.