Week Three Post

This Victoria F. Franco series 4 of 4, mixed- medial collage, 18x15 inches piece by Yolanda Lopez shows her rasquache sensibility. The piece is a drawing of her grandmother and she incorporates a mixture of what seems to be newspaper and magazine cut outs as the body of her grandmother. The way she grew up and the practices of her family all shaped and influenced her artistic approach. The rasquache sensibility arose through the class status Yolanda and her family lived under. The use of non-traditional supplies and practices also simultaneously challenged the Eurocentric notions of fine art.

The essay The Iconography of Chicano Self-Determination: Race, Ethnicity, and Class, showed the many recurring themes that Chicano and Chicana art illustrate through their art to address race, ethnicity, and class. The essay also illustrates certain artists who have taken an affirmative stance celebrating race, ethnicity, and class. The paper addressed the racism that aided to the subjection of many races.  One of the artists featured in the readings was Antonio Bernal, who constructed a mural. The mural had many features of acknowledgement of race. The dark skinned characters in the mural admired leaders of the Mexican revolution and present  to illustrate the detachment from the Spanish lineage by a high emphasis and stress on the dark-skinned indigenous heritage. The piece also gave homage to activist women and suggested the alliance between Mexicans and the African-American civil-rights movement.