Presentation: Diane Gamboa

Out of all the artists that we saw during week 8, Diane Gamboa's art stood out the most to me. Gamboa is from East Los Angeles. According to our classmate, Gamboa already had an art exhibit at merely the age of five. That is very young age to have accomplished something like that; I know it was not something like the art exhibits we see in museums but the mere fact that she knew what she wanted and that she made it happen is very admirable. Further into her career as an adult, Gamboa began including her interest of tattoos into her artwork. Gamboa has many tattoos of her own so it is understandable that she would also incorporate them in her art. If you think about it, Gamboa's own body can be considered a canvas as it holds her tattoos as art pieces. Interestingly enough, Gamboa started off as a photographer. This image in particular was quite captivating to me because of the colors and drawing style. A lot (if not all) of Gamboa's art shows her characters' gender as ambiguous. She paints these figures as showing both feminine and masculine characteristics. I like this very much because it shows the fluidity of gender and challenges the gender binary. Her art questions what is typically accepted as identifiers for men and women. The ambiguity in her work shows that there are not strict rules for such. She also took on the idea of reclaiming our own narratives as Chicanx. Mexicans are commonly called aliens so she also paints her figures in such a manner. The beings in her art not only resemble gender fluidity but also depictions of extra terrestrials.