Week 10 Reflection Post

During this quarter, I learned a lot in many different aspects. Although I am an art major student, I don't know much about Chicana art and that's part of the reason why I took this course. Through this course, I learned a lot of knowledge about Chicana artist which is a world I never reach about. There are many differences between Chicana artists and artists born and raised in the United States. Also through this course, I could know a lot about how people live in that area from there artworks, there are many works reflect many problems they face with, such as the United States-Mexico border problem and the problem about missing home. As an international student from China, I can get the similar feeling. On the other hand, I really like the sketchbook project, although I have taken the drawing class before, that's two years ago that I almost forget the drawing skills, this project helps me improve the drawing skills a lot. And we could create the drawings inspired by artists, I think this is a very meaningful project for me.
In all, this is a great class and definitely a worth taking course which I learn a lot and inspire me a lot.

Presentation on week 8: Laura Aguilar

As a photographer,  Laura Aguilar definitely is the most interesting artist for me in week 8, also there are far fewer artists doing photography than artists doing painting or drawing in Chicana artists. But it doesn't mean Laura Aguilar's works are not as good as Chicana painters and drawers, she approaches her art in a unique way which really attractive to the viewers. Her works are mainly about the naked body in a natural environment such as rocks and lakes. Her works are perfectly blended into the environment and became part of it. And through her works, I can see many of her effort to try different gestures and angles about how the naked body works with the environment.

Presentation: Angélica Becerra

Through the presentations, Angélica Becerra is one of the artists most impressive and unique to me. As the presentation mentioned, Angélica Becerra is a Latina woman which is very successful, she also is a Ph.D. student at UCLA.  Her works have a very strong personal characteristic in styles and colors. Sometimes with some powerful words and sentences such as the image I choose.
This image really catches my eyes not only because of the bright colors and the powerful words but also about how the colors incorporate together. The color red, yellow, and green at the bottom of the image make the whole painting much better and works to reflect the words make the words more dissolve into the painting.

Judith F. Baca

Judith F. Baca’s “Tres Generaciones”, 1973. It’s a large painting about her grandmother, her mother and herself. In this painting she wants to explore the relationship in generations so that each of them are connected with Judith F. Baca’s grandmother. The most attractive part in this painting for me is the color she use, the connection between her family are decorated by using a lot of color to show the complex and close relationship. Furthermore, the  family is well positioned in this painting, Judith F. Baca’s grandmother is on the right of the painting and other family are on the left, the younger the family, the further left they are. As a result, all the connection lines are lied at the bottom middle of the painting. On the other hand, the lines and the clouds like decoration in the background are also important to this painting. There are many color used in the background to reflect her family’s experience through years, so they seems complex and full of variety.

Carmen Lomas Garza

Carmen Lomas Garza is a Chicana artist who grew up in South Texas. Her artwork ranges from paintings to installations to children's books and much more. She was inspired by the 60s and 70s Chicano movement to make paintings that deliver a message to the public that despite racial discrimination, cultural conflict, and social prejudice, Garza’s cultural heritage in a Chicano/a community is still a rich and vital one
Lomas Garza's attention to detail translates as attention to symbolism and what meaning these small details, such as landscape. Carmen Lomas Garza’s work is such an important step in the trajectory of “art history”. 
La Tamalada is one of my favorite work she created, made in 1988, depicts a brown family, working together to make tamales. In the 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.

Roberto Tejada: Celia Alvarez Muñoz

Celia Alvarez Muñoz is an Chicana artist born in Ei Paso in 1937, she grew up in the culture environment among U.S.-Mexico border. Because of the environment she grew up, her artworks always included family and "communal memories".

The first image is Abriendo Tierra/Breaking Ground in Dallas Museum of art with the Dallas skyline in the background. “Alvarez Muñoz assembled an wooden structure made of timbers that suggested the ties used in railway construction.” And what I like the most is the “X” shape light in the structure with the reflection of the pool. The design of the “X” shape light is cleaver that in human’s regular height, the light is just a horizontal line, people can only find the “X” shape in the pool. Also because the time the image was taken in the magic time, the color of the “X” match the color of the sky. Furthermore, according to the book: “The glowing X created a time-based effect in the transition from daylight to dusk.” In my opinion, this structure well balanced the concept of a colonial structure and a real use for the museum to link the interior and the exterior.

CARA's Politics of Representation

This CARA exhibition written by Alicia Gaspar de Alba was said to be truly inclusive of Chicana Artists in an effort to highlight their culture and its importance. And With a closer look, it was obvious that were there much more male artists featured than female artists. But Gaspar de Alba states that it was not because there were so many more Chicano male artists presented and only a few of works by Chicanas.  One example Gaspar de Alba notes is the portion of the exhibit dedicated to artists expressing the impact of Frida Kahlo. While it is a step forward to highlight the career of a female artist, it was counteractive that all of the artists whose opinions were valued enough to be featured in the exhibit was Chicano. Author Alicia Gaspar de Alba reinforces these ideas because every artist included in the “Feminist Visions” room of the exhibition is female, which conveys that only women should be concerned with women’s liberation, and by including other works by Chicano artists that depict women as either mothers, virgins, or whores, or only as part of patriarchal units. Then She goes on to focus on the artwork of the Chicanas in the exhibition and find the way that the artists use the iconography of La Virgen, La Llorana, and La Malinche and how these three folk figures factor into their identities as Chicanas.

Chicana Sexuality and Gender: Cultural Refiguring in Literature, Oral History, and Art

In chapter two, the author uses the female god Coyolxauhqui in the Mexico history to start the chapter: “For Gloria Anzaldúa, Coyolxauhqui is a metaphor informing her struggle to rewrite the myths and fictions that have been used against women and people of color ‘‘to control, regulate and manipulate us. The Mexica’s symbolic dismemberment of Coyolxauhqui suggests patriarchal and colonial violence against women’s bodies and so ke a person and divide her up, you disempower her. She’s no longer a threat.” The Coyolxauhqui is a very familiar character to me, as I learned from the art history course, the Coyolxauhqui is a very important character in the Mexican history, at the time she was born, her brother wanted to kill Coyolxauhqui and her mother before she was born, but her brother was late. Coyolxauhqui killed her brother when she just came out and she makes his brother as a stone at the bottom of the pyramid. 

In chapter five, author talks about why oral narratives, not the first status. There are many reasons to get this result. Color, Gender, and language could all be part of the reason: “Likewise, women’s experiences and stories were devalued, even when women began to write and publish. In these ways, oral narratives are multiply marginalized by their status as oral; by association with women, even more so by women of color; and by the language in which they are spoken if not Standard English, for example, Spanish, black English, or Spanish and English code-switching or vernacular. Oral and life histories continue to be relegated to the sidelines, even though, like folklore, they are considered to be the inspiration for much creative and nonfiction writing.” In this text, the author indicates that the oral narratives are not as valuable as middle-class written books or papers simply because of their status in the society. 

Presentation: Suzy Gonzalez

Suzy Gonzalez is a contemporary Chicana artist who was born and raised in Texas. This artist I choose is not from the list professor provided. I choose this artist because her work is impressive to me.
She graduated with a BFA from Texas State University in 2012 and attended the Vermont Studio Center residency later that same year. Her work functions to investigate the complexities of the identities of marginalized beings.

 With her current work, Miss Drumstick, Suzy takes influence from the feminization of animal-based food products, beauty pageants, and customary language in order to explore the relationships between the inequalities of the female human and the female nonhuman. With an emblematic color palette, she speaks of the unique experience of each individual woman and her lamentable relationship to each individual female nonhuman. She uses mannequins as painting surfaces because they represent an idealized human form while they are, in fact, objects. They speak of fashion, advertising, and socially acceptable performative gender roles.

Zhu, Shupeng

Hi, everyone
My name is Shupeng Zhu, My preferred pronouns are he/his/him, I'm currently third-year Art major. I'm from China, Beijing which is a city that changing and developing very fast, there are some many changes every year or even every month. But the art study in China is restricted and that's the reason why I came to the United States to study art.  

The article "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" by Linda Nochlin was an interesting read. It argues about “why have there been no great women artists?” and the truth is that society or art society never give women a chance. In other words, women artists were never competing with men artists in a fair way. So the women face itself is women artists' disadvantage. On the other hand, women read the whole art world in a different way compare to men, as the Linda Nochlin said: "It may be asserted that women artists are more inwardlooking, more delicate and nuanced in their treatment of their medium." and there are many other reasons that cause there been no great women artist in the article. The situation still exists today but is getting better and better.