CARA Exhibition: Alicia Gaspar de Alba

After reading “Out of the House, the Halo, and the Whore’s Mask: The Mirror of Malinchismo” by Alicia Gaspar de Alba. I realized that the CARA exhibition was indeed one of the significant events in Chicano Art Movement. By hosting this exhibition, it’s objective is to end discrimination, racism, and poverty. It really saddens me to see the racial and gender inequality that still exist in this word today. Although the CARA exhibition has made a great improvement on racial discrimination, Alicia Gaspar de Alba pointed out that it really lacked gender equality as well as sexuality.

I was particularly appalled by the ratio of works by gender that are in the exhibition. There are way more male artworks than female works. After analyzing the table that is given in the book, there is only 44 works by females and 140 were by males, which is an unfair ratio of 11:35 from females to males. This is not because there are less female artists than males, but the fact that Chicana artists and less noticed than Chicano artists. It is even more disappointing to see the fact that out of the 14 works on feminist visions, all 14 of them were created by females. This says a lot about the sexual politics in the Chicano culture, that they still believe in the patriarchy system. During Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s talk in class last week, she asked us who considered ourselves to be feminist. I found it interesting and is also happy to find out that many raised their hands, including males. Some even mentioned that even though they don’t call themselves feminists, they fully support feminism.