Week 9 Presentations: Laura Aguilar

The artist from Week 9's presentations that stood out to me the most was Laura Aguilar. I have been thinking about her and her work ever since we watched the interview with her in class. Her black and white photography often juxtaposes the landscape with the human figure.

Laura Aguilar's work is so personal and empowering because it exists as a dialogue between her environment, her body, and herself.

Week 8: Presentation on Monica Kim Garza

The artist that resonated with me the most from the Week 7 presentations was Monica Kim Garza. Her work focuses on female figures shamelessly engaging in friendship and sex and life. Her paintings are striking, not because of the nude figures but because of the beautiful color palettes and the powerful imagery she uses.

After seeing the presentation I looked at Garza's work for a long time because the pieces have such great energy. Her work is so inspiring from both a visual and sociopolitical standpoint. All of her work equates the female form to freedom and agency. It's also powerful to see a Korean and Mexican immigrant able to celebrate her identity in her art. I picked the painting below from her Leisure Time series because I think it incorporates my favorite elements of her art into one piece: vivid imagery, colors, and feminine unity.

Week 7- Ester Hernandez Presentation

For my presentation I will be discussing the work of Ester Hernandez, a visionary Chicana artist and printmaker. Hernandez grew up in Dinuba, CA where her mother worked temporarily as a farmhand. While in Dinuba, Hernandez witnessed the protests led by Cesar Chavez, which had a lasting impact on her and her work. She began to create work that advocates for the rights of labor workers and criticizes the inhumane practices they are forced to participate in.

In the late 1970s, Hernandez returned home to visit her mother and learned about the water contamination occurring in the barrio, and reflected on the time she spent assisting her mom growing grapes for the raisin industry. In 1982 Hernandez made the piece Sun Mad to reflect her anger at the inhumane practices and conditions workers in the raisin industry are exposed to. Hernandez subverted the image of the wholesome Sun-Maid raisin girl, turning her into a skeleton to represent the harmful conditions that the workers are exposed to. I love this print because it sends such a direct message by revealing the true nature behind labor practices.


Sun Mad (1982) by Ester Hernandez

Week 6 Stencil

For my stencil I have decided to depict an image of a candle similar to the one in the photo below. I spent a while thinking about different images that I thought would look cool or be fun in terms of design, but I ended up picking a candle because I have really been appreciating comfort and warmth recently. I want to use the stencil medium to exaggerate the light and warmth that exudes from a candle by drawing soft ripples around the light. I try to go home every other weekend so I can regroup and relax, and I always try to light candles and create a certain atmosphere for myself.

Ofelia Esparza -Week 5

Ofelia's words were very inspiring as she talked about the great influence that her mother had on her art and life philosophies. It was also very powerful when she talked about how she always believed she had not met her grandmother, but felt her presence and her influence in all aspects of her life. Her work highlights the importance of the intergenerational impact that is so prevalent in Chicana art. I loved how she also involved the younger generations in her family to help her create her art, and talked about how she wouldn't be able to do all that she does without them.


Ofelia Esparza's presentation had a great impact on me as an artist and as a young woman, and her words were both touching and powerful. It was incredibly inspiring to see a woman who has done so much with her life yet continues to strive for a broader artistic portfolio and to create a lasting impact on her community. Her impact on her community was the most inspiring, as she stayed in East LA for her entire life and took on different roles throughout her life. One of her roles was being a teacher for over 30 years, where she helped to directly pass down her culture to the youth in her neighborhood. She also worked with Self Help Graphics, creating beautiful altars and prints.

Overall I really appreciated Ofelia's presentation and the inspiration it has given me is invaluable.

Rasquachismo and Domesticana -Week 4

Rasquachismo is said to be an attitude or sensibility rather than a specific idea or confined style. Initially used as a negative and derogatory term, artists have been reclaiming rasquachismo, which comes from the word rasquache used to signify low class and bad taste. Artist Amalia Mesa-Bains describes the reclaiming of rasquachismo to be a celebration of “the underdog”, utilizing inventiveness, defiance, and a survivalist attitude. This includes art that uses unlikely objects and mediums to create art that is as much about the art as it is about the backstory or the customization of an object.

Domesticana is similar to rasquachismo in the way it reclaims and redefines aspects of identity but explores themes of the domestic world, subverting expectations by combining elements of domesticity with elements of ruin and loss. It is born out of a resistance to majority culture and its expectations for women. Domesticana exists at a juxtaposition between the celebration of domestic life and the destruction of the oppressive elements that occur within it. Much of the work stems from home altars and religious memorabilia, and can be created with found objects and reconstructions.

Runner: On My Own! (1997) by Yolanda López

A reoccurring motif across the work of Yolanda López is the figure of a woman running. Sometimes that woman is López herself, other times it is not. In the painting Runner: On My Own!, López is depicted running up a hill away from her school the University of California, San Diego. López's figure is leaping off the image and into uncharted territory. The painting is the last in the series A Donde Vas, Chicana?, an autobiographical series that documents her journey through college. The image is bright, with earth tones in the background and López donning a running outfit that has colors mirroring Guadalupe's classic color scheme (pink and blue-green). The look on her face is determined and fierce, and her body exudes strength. Like many of López's other pieces, Runner: On My Own! challenges common narratives about women by offering images of empowered women existing outside of the male gaze and agenda. Unlike her other self-portraits, López's gaze does not meet the viewers but instead is focused forward, self-contained. The painting also serves as a criticism of the brute modernism of UCSD by painting the buildings as an unnatural eyesore. López struggled with the school's way of valuing soulless modernism over passionate conceptual art. The buildings are tiny in the background, in a shadowy gray, while the figure is bright and full of life. López seemingly escapes and conquers the campus, moving into the future with grace and determination.

Ester Hernandez and Alicia Gaspar de Alba Reaction

Hello class! I specified that I will be presenting on the Chicana artist Ester Hernández under the Presentations 2020 tab earlier this week. Ester is a printmaker and illustrator based in the San Francisco area whose work confronts stereotypes of Chicana/Latina women by portraying the diverse experiences they have. 

I found Alicia Gaspar de Alba's article "Out of the House, the Halo, and the Whore's Mask: The Mirror of Malinchismo" to be enlightening on the way that female artists are excluded from exhibitions that claim to be inclusive. I really appreciated her breakdown of what feminism means to different groups, and how limiting it is to analyze things like the CARA exhibition through a single lens. I also appreciated the call to a diverse breadth of work regarding the Chicana artists experience, one that includes isolation and rage and sexuality that does not involve the male gaze. The way the article pointed out how CARA exuded male privilege and perpetuated stereotypes of Chicana artists was very vivid, and I appreciated Gaspar de Alba's weighed criticism. What I found most powerful in the article was how she shed light on the way that Chicana artists are outsiders to "the dominant codes of Chicanismo"(p.20). I think it is important to realize how gender identity can isolate those who are not male from their ethnic community. 

My question is: What was the initial reaction to this article? And how have things changed for Chicana artists since?

Dyson, Corinne

Hey class! My name is Corinne Dyson and I'm a 3rd-year transfer from Pasadena City College. I'm majoring in Anthropology and minoring in Professional Writing. Outside of school, I am a very amateur illustrator and painter. I love visual art, and I think it is one of the most powerful tools to empower people, especially those who are oppressed and marginalized. As a person who lives in Los Angeles, and a fellow POC, it's important to me to support Chicanx artists and the complex, beautiful work they produce. I’m really looking forward to furthering my appreciation for diverse art perspectives & gaining new insights in this class. I’m also looking forward to finding new artists in my community to support. I really enjoyed starting off the class by reading "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" by Linda Nochlin because it articulates the multitude of reasons why the work of male artists has been showcased for centuries and the work of female artists has been forgotten, discarded, or never created in the first place.

 

(itsa me on the right)