Looking at the Past While Pointing Forward: Carmen Lomas Garza

Carmen Lomas Garza, Camas para Sueños, 1985, gouache on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, © 1985

One piece that illustrates the dichotomy between both remembrance and dreaming is Garza’s Cama Para Suenos(1985). This image depicts a moment from Garza’s childhood where her mother is making the bed while Garza sits on top of the roof with her sister. As her mother spreads the sheet across the bed, Garza points to the sky dreaming of becoming an artist. This image was painted with gouache on paper and although this scene depicts a memory it seems to more so represent the space of dreams or hopes. The juxtaposition between mother and daughters isn’t a direct memory(The viewer can’t be certain that the young Carmen Lomas Garza is aware that her mother is beneath her at the exact moment where she points to the sky) but rather a reimagined moment. Young Garza pointing to the sky seems to beckon the viewer to look towards greater possibilities. All of the imaginative possibilities of dreaming are couched within nostalgia and a precise moment of Garza’s past. I love her work because in my opinion she's able to convey a full range of imaginative possibilities while contemplating very personal memories. Everyone in her more personal paintings exist in relationship to each other, and they also exists as more than victims of oppression. Her paintings are simplistically beautiful yet they show the complexity of Mexican community.