Week 10 Reflection

When this class first started and I realized we would mainly be drawing hands, I was pretty worried that I wouldn't be able to enjoy the practices. Having taken a class with our profe before I felt very inclined to take this second art class and I just wanted to be able to do more art but drawing hands felt like a hellllllaaa long stretch to start getting into art with. I trusted Alma though because she is very understanding and I know that I have a different conception of what art is supposed to look like because I've never had real exposure to it. I loved when Alma would just remind us that ultimately what we were seeing was graphite on paper because it took off pressure to make it look "nice" and you could just draw what you saw. I really liked being able to look through my book and see the progress I made. I only wish that I could have tried being a little more creative instead of trying to make it look good, but I am completely happy with how most of my hands came out and the work that I put in there. I hope it looks like I tried, because I really tried. I would always say, "Oh, I'll just draw one hand and do it real quick," but I'd end up pushing that paper I had to write till the next day cause I got occupied.
Besides all the fun drawings and colors (also my newfound love for watercolor pencils!) I appreciate having been able to grow my knowledge of arts and Latina artists specifically. Learning these artists' journies and seeing the beautiful works they produced was really special to me. I liked being able to see their early work and how the advanced in skill and opportunities because just like me they started somewhere that wasn't anywhere near the top. I'm not saying I am about to be an artist, but with anything I do, I want to have an artist spirit of just doing my best to leave fear out of my canvas/life and just go for it. I am glad that in my last year at UCLA I chose to take my first two art classes and with an amazing professor like Alma Lopez. I am so excited to keep drawing in the rest of that book, for fun and because I paid for it.

Week 9 Presentations:

I really enjoyed when Afro-Latinx artists were introduced in class because their identity has routinely been excluded from conversations revolving inclusivity of Latinos in media, education, class, community, etc, etc. Lili Bernard is an Afro-Cuban artist and I enjoyed the sheer amount of detail each of her paintings has. I feel like I can write entire papers on just a corner of a piece or a single character in the scene. I am really attracted to bright, colorful images and so I was immediately attracted to this piece, Carnaval en La Trocha. The energy of this painting is very fun, exaggerated, and free and it gives an appropriate feel to how I imagine celebrations and carnavals are when everyone in the community can be comfortable and joyful with one another. I feel like I can hear the music, laughter and yells and I love that my eyes cannot keep up with all these colors and patterns.

I appreciated learning about Bernard the work that she does, especially hearing about her own incidences of sexual assault, especially one that ends up having a lot of publicity to it. I remember the powerful painting she did with her in a straight jacket, and all three woman in the portrait have a tear running down their faces. I felt like I could see that these women had connected experiences of pain and sadness. It made the image much more profound to me and with all of the detail and agony within the faces and storied depictions, I could begin to imagine that pain too and really felt even more empathetic and triggered by the acts of violence that women have to face and, unfortunately, go through every day.

Presentation Artisst: Pola Lopez

I think the presentation on Pola Lopez was one of the last ones presented, so I really remember it a lot more than some of the others. I really loved looking at her work because of the amount of detail that you can she put into her pieces. This particular piece really caught my eye. I can only imagine the amount of work it takes to put all of the details and colors on this jacket to make it look so blinged out and amazing. I love the subtlety in the woman's stance and how it makes her seem like a bad ass ready to go out to el baile or whatever party she's heading to. I also really admired the piece, Lifting the Veil because of the great detail and intensity of the eyes. It was really fun to look at her work, and even now trying to find an image of this piece I began to look at some of her other work and am really happy with the new talent I have just been exposed to. She is a wonderful artist and I am excited to maybe learn more about her myself.

Judith F. Baca: La Memoria de Nuestra Tierra: California

In 1996, Judith Baca was commissioned to create a piece for the USC student center. Like other pieces she has completed before, her work was met with resistance and censorship of the visions she had produced. The work titled La Memoria de Nuestra Tierra: California was accepted on the premises of creating a work to acknowledge the history of Mexicanos and Native people on this land now known as California, but the USC administration had other ideas. In a transcript created by Judy to show the contention and friction she faced from the President Samples, as he interjects on her piece depicting the strong brown goddess rising from the land with mouth wide open, almost in a grito, in a traditional Japanese-style. He asked why she had to be so angry, inattentive of the fact that a metal border fence is being pinned to her back. He was confused about the blood coming from her, depicting the literal blood our ancestors shed to form this land, but it is understandable for him to have missed that point when he also goes ahead and asks why there are (Native) Indians in a Mexican work. In the words of Judith Baca, “Do you really not know”?

A piece of the original image Judith had produced di end up censored, erasing an image depicting a lynching, agreeing with it as unacceptable but a true fact of history. The witty responses she had for the president made me laugh and smile but I cannot help but flinch at the fact that she has to go through these measures to produce and defend her work. Even then, when the student center was torn down, the mural was then moved to a much less accessible area in Graduate dorms finishing the school’s censoring process. I look at this image and see a lot of strength and honor in my people and stunned at the amount of detail and subtle imagery Baca can place in her pieces. There is so much that can be said about a single painting, and one can go on and on, and I think that is another kind of extra magic that Judith works have.

Carmen Lomas Garza, Para la Cena

Carmen Lomas Garza is an artist who portrays a lot of the "folk" lifestyle of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans/Chicanos. She was very influenced by her life growing up surrounded by her family and her community and it is really beautiful to me to see how much success she reached by just painting meaningful experiences of hers. In the painting, Para la Cena (For Dinner) you can see Garza's grandparents about to start preparing dinner by killing some of the chickens they are farming. This painting has humorous effects by showing the young brother being so shocked by witnessing where his dinner comes from that he's dropping his slushie. I think what is equally evident in this painting is the division of labor is equal here. In many of her paintings, Carmen portrays the women doing much of the house and kitchen work, as has been traditionally seen in Mexican homes, but in this image that is not the case. Her grandmother is doing more than her part in cooking the meal and even killing and beheading her soon to be meal. This is normal to her and is not something that needs to be hidden from her grandchildren, although it is a little shocking to them. This is the way my parents tried to raise my brothers and I. We never had our own chickens but at one point we did farm and eat rabbits and it is very endearing to see it portrayed so normally by Lomas-Garza. The connection I feel when seeing her artwork is one I imagine most Chicanos and Mexicans equally feel in seeing this kind of representation. 

Yolanda M. Lopez-- Running: On My Own

      Yolanda Lopez was a visual artist who varied a lot in the style of art she used to portray her visions and voice. During her ¿A Donde Vas, Chicana? series, the artist used her love of running to portray herself running throughout her campus at the University of California, San Diego. During her graduate experience, much like many first-generation college students, she had to adjust a lot to the environment around her to "get through school" which seems to be a common theme amongst students who are out there to prove their parents' hard work while dismissing the struggles they face to show that. Throughout the series, Yolanda is jumping on and off the frame of the scene portrayed and I chose to talk about specifically the last piece of the seven done for the series, Running: On My Own. 
      In the last piece, Yolanda is seen almost mounting off the screen, meant to portray her accomplishments as a changing student on her campus and into the future, with so much gained strength from both her newfound love of physical activity and love of herself as a Chicana. This can be seen throughout the series in which she goes from being in black & white to color, with an emphasis on her clothing transforming into the traditional colors of the robes of La Virgen de Guadalupe. I found it very empowering for her to show herself stomping over these predominantly white spaces that were never really created for her or women like her. Yet, there she is, a powerful Latina, using the environment around her and really optimizing her accessibility to it in being able to cruise throughout the scenes. This last photo shows a real triumph as you see Lopez seems to be running over to the top of this hill, with her school in the background as she jumps forward to leave it behind-- a triumph every brown student is hoping to achieve as visible as Yolanda has made herself in these images.

CARA Exhibition: Alicia Gaspar de Alba

      In analyzing the CARA exhibition, Dr. Alicia Gaspar de Alba critiqued the appraisal we as consumers, art exhibitioners, and Chicanos give to Chicana artists and Chicana women. I thought it was very interesting of her to relate the Chicano movement to an analogy of Animal Farm, a novel very renowned and place in much of our curriculum of history. It creates a simple way for most readers to really understand what she is trying to imply that the movement, and in general most movements of resistance, have shown a biased towards some group of people within those oppressed that are seen as "more equal." I appreciate that in class, Professor Alicia discussed her initial lack of knowledge in the art realm because it shows that this kind of analysis and critique is not one that needs to be supported by a long history of privileged academia but of simply being a Chicana woman and feeling unprioritized and unappreciated.
      The centrality to motherhood as our identity as women is one that has always bothered me, and I appreciated the fact that Alicia called out the overemphasis of this theme within the exhibition itself. It placed us into categories of "Adelitas" or "Malinches" still catering to our reproductive responsibilities, with much of the artwork propelling our identities as mothers. The point being, our representation was very limited, as it has always been. I do wonder, how exhibitions like these have progressed from this time, and if inclusion has become more well-rounded for Chicana women. I hope that feminism within the art movement has transcended to more than just revolving around a few women, and becomes more intersectional. Its art and representation are not solely for the Chicana woman or by the Chicana woman. This misled ideology creates a barrier to dialogue, and there are already so many other barriers on top of that.

Debra Blake, Chicana Sexuality and Gender

       

In writing my paper I found that I was stuck between choosing just the three out of many quotes that caught my attention in Debra Blakes book, so for this week's post, I decided to talk about a quote I didn't choose for my paper but also made me gain a different perspective. “These re-presentations of strong and combative women exist in stark contrast to the traditional image of the long-suffering Mexican Virgin who does not have the power to act and who bears all suffering and injustice without complaint” (Blake, 64). In this quote, Blake is describing the influence that icons like La Malinche, La Llorona and Mexica goddesses have on Chicana artists and writers, seen through their re-presentations in their work.

Through the works of artists like Yolanda Lopez, Alma Lopez, Sandra Cisneros, and Cherrie Moraga, these icons can be represented as empowering feminist figures to help Chicana women redefine their gendered boundaries in traditional roles and sexuality. What really caught my attention about this quote is the acknowledgment that the Virgen is a figure who represents the complacent and non-confrontational Chicana that is desired by Chicano men. As women, we are left to bear the suffering, the tragedies, and stay grounded enough to support our families. Throughout the entire book, I was able to uncover so much about these icons I grew up with, through perspectives I never thought I could imaginably perceive. I've known what it is to reclaim something, historically for groups of racial or political pariahs, but to culturally refigure something or someone, as these artists have done is something that reclaims history, culture, and identity.

It was very interesting to me to see how these cultural icons have been molded to fit ideals that contrast the patron saint Guadalupe, and used against Chicanas to outline to us what our fates will be as we stray away from the virginal path imagined to us by our mothers. It takes power to re-imagine La Virgen and every icon that has been treated as whores or traitors. Just as their images have been defined by men in power, wishing to promote their continuing privileges, we can redefine their influence through our own oral histories to find empowerment. 

Presentation: Adriana Yadira Gallego

I am choosing to complete my presentation on the artist, Adriana Yadira Gallego. I was randomly looking at people on the list and as I quickly skimmed through Gallego's biography I was very intrigued by her art and her collections. I kept wanting to look at more and hear her interpretations of her paintings. I find myself excited to learn more about her and her come-up, and it surprises me some of the things she's been able to accomplish at a young age.
Gallego's art seems contemporary to me as she has a collection called La Frontera, containing visuals of cross-border migration in the desert. The painting I attached is called Invocacion and from her Divine Impulse collection. The series has a variety of these dia de los muertos like dancers as well as other fun spirited damas and it has a very beautiful ruggedness about it. It will be interesting to learn more about her artwork and awareness that she can spread through her presence and art. She will surely be one more Chicana artist that I can remember after this class.

Reza, Diana

At the 2017 ¡Mirame! Exhibition

Hello, my fellow Chicana Art and Artists peers! My name is Diana Reza and I am a fourth-year undergrad here and am majoring in Psychobiology, with a minor in Chicana/o studies. I am excited to be on that last stretch before graduation and feel excited to enjoy this class as one of my last ones. I am looking forward to hopefully being able to expand my knowledge of Chicana artists and what their influences mean to me as a Chicana. I was also unaware of the art component for this class and am really excited that I'll be able to work creatively again and be able to increase somewhat my artistic knowledge and skills.

For the reading this week, I wanted to discuss the essay by our professor, Alma Lopez "It's not about the Santa in My Fe, but the Santa Fe in My Santa." I have read Professor Lopez's book before for a previous class with her, but this time I analyzed it from a different perspective based on the subject of this class. The previous course was dealing with Censored Art and with this class focusing on Chicana artists, I was able to pay attention to the Chicana in the reading versus the work of art. I felt a stronger sense of how the Chicana artists mentioned in the excerpts were not only making "controversial" art but making as Chicana women as well.

It was also interesting to then understand more how the Virgen of Guadalupe can be this amazing icon for the revolutionary Chicana, as well as an artistic symbol of Chicana strength. This is even more thought-provoking when you consider that much of her creation and spread throughout our culture is colonized. These ambiguities of this sacred santa were thoughts I didn't initially consider when I first read this passage and it is exciting to see how I can understand future material through the continued use of multiple frameworks.