Vallejo, Linda

For my presentation, I chose Linda Vallejo among the other artists on the list because when I googled their names, an article with a very interesting title appeared and it was about Linda Vallejo. Linda Vallejo is a Mexican-American artist born in 1951 in East Los Angeles. She received a BA in Fine Arts from Whittier College in 1973, studied lithography at the University of Madrid, Spain, and earned an MFA from California State University, Long Beach in 1978. Her arts are influenced from her study and travel throughout Europe, the United States, and Mexico.

The article written about Linda Vallejo that caught my eyes was about how she got the idea to change numerous famous icons’ skin colors into tanned skin, sometimes with tattoos, presenting them as all Mexicans in her series titled “Make ‘Em All Mexican”. Some of those famous icons include Marilyn Monroe (Marielena), Elvis Presley (El Vis), Audrey Hepburn (Aurora Hernandez), Cate Blanchett (Catarina Blancarte), etc. She even changed Oscar statues and they suddenly became starlets of Mexican descent, which attracted a lot of press. Along with the ongoing popular hashtag #OscarSoWhite, Linda Vallejo prefers to imagine it as the year of #OscarSoBrown.

Linda’s series, “Make ‘Em All Mexican” has made some people think that the Oscar statue was modeled after a Mexican actor and director, Emilio Fernandez. Although The Academy has officially stated that there was no model for the statue, it was still really hard for people to look at the trophy and the image of Emilio side-by-side and not see that they were almost exactly alike. Linda’s unique idea has caught attention to people and to me. Thus, I am really looking forward to discovering more about her art.