week 10 - reflection

As a Chicana and an artist, I’m a little embarrassed to admit that before this course, I couldn’t name more than 5 Chicana artists off the top of my head. I’ve been making and studying art since I was in high school but all of the required art history classes I’ve ever taken have primarily focused on art made by straight white men. If you want to learn about art outside of the European canon of history, you have to seek out that information on your own or take a specialized course dedicated to that specific “other” kind of art. I’m grateful that this course has exposed me to a plethora of amazing Chicana and Latina artists. Having Ofelia Esparza come and speak to the class was probably one of the most memorable and impactful parts of this course. It’s one thing to research an artist online, but to be fortunate enough to have a physical, in-person interaction with someone you admire is truly priceless. I’m super thankful that she took the time out of her busy life to come and share a little bit of herself with us—it’s incredibly generous and I wish we could’ve had more artists come and do the same.

week 9 - margarita cabrera

From this week’s presentations, I’m most interested in learning more about Mexican-American artist Margarita Cabrera. I’m always drawn to artists who embrace craft and other non-conventional materials in their work. I’m also interested in politically engaged and collaborative artworks, all of which Cabrera is exploring. I’m particularly excited about her soft sculptures of cacti, aloe vera, agave, and other plants from the American southwest. I love soft sculptures because they subvert the viewer’s expectations and encourage closer/deeper inspection. It’s a cactus, but it’s made out of fabric—but it’s not just any fabric. It’s fabric from uniforms worn by U.S. Border Patrol officers. Colorful drawings of homes, people, hearts, stars, crosses, and more are sewn onto the surface of the repurposed uniforms. Cabrera, an immigrant herself, hosts embroidery workshops where she makes these soft sculptures in collaboration with local immigrant communities. They share their stories with one another which informs the kind of imagery that gets embroidered onto the plants. I think Cabrera’s use of art as a means to form community and initiate necessary conversations surrounding border relations, labor practices, and immigration is inspirational and groundbreaking. She is working directly with the community she aims to serve, empowering one another through artistic collaboration in addition to sharing and documenting their experiences, struggles, and achievements.

week 8 - monica kim garza

From this week’s presentations, I was particularly drawn to the work of Monica Kim Garza. At first glance, her paintings reminded me of Paul Gauguin. Gauguin was a French post-Impressionist painter from the late 1800s. When his career started to suffer in the 1890s, he decided to travel to Tahiti to revive his muse. His Tahiti trips were essentially a get-rich-quick-scheme. He made paintings of the natives in an effort to sell the idea of Tahiti as a primitive, erotic Garden of Eden-type paradise to the elites back in France. He made it seem like all the natives ever did in Tahiti was lay around, sing, dance, and make love. Garza’s work, on the other hand, is a thousand times more interesting than Gauguin’s could ever be. For one, she is not a white man coming into a foreign land and commodifying the bodies of the native people who live there. Whereas Gauguin painted nude brown women to make a profit, Garza’s work celebrates women of color and their bodies. The women in Garza’s paintings are unapologetically themselves. They’re nude and carefree, running around doing whatever they please. They don’t exist for the sole purpose of being consumed or gazed upon. The vibrant colors and loose brushwork create a fantastical setting for these magical beings to explore. I love how Garza represents contemporary women and their lives within the context of art historical motifs/settings—she truly is taking back the female form from the colonialized male gaze. 

Monica Kim Garza

Paul Gauguin