CARA Exhibition Reflection

Professor Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s interdisciplinary study of the CARA exhibition, “Out of the House, the Halo, and the Whore’s Mask: The Mirror of Malinchismo” provides a critical framework that encompasses what the CARA exhibition missed, or better yet, excluded: an intersectional analysis with an emphasis on the sexual politics of the Chicano Art Movement. Gaspar de Alba details each room of the exhibition and puts the staggering numbers of who was represented into perspective, Chicanas often times being the only one featured in a room full of male artists. Gaspar de Alba writes, “...approximately a hundred more Chicano artists than Chiacanas were represented… Of the fourteen pieces in the ‘Cultural Icons’ room, one was done by a woman; of the ten in in ‘Civil Liberties’ one was done by a woman; of the ten in ‘Urban Images,’ you guessed correctly, one by a woman” (120). Delegating the women’s representation to a single section of ‘Feminist Visions’ serving as a transition between ‘Reclaiming the Past’ and ‘Redefining American Art’, while disappointing, highlights the misogynistic and homophobic ideals of the Chicano Art World and larger Chicano community. As a proud Xicana dyke, where I feel the most visibility regarding the CARA exhibition is in Cherrie Moraga and Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s words. It’s in their critiques that they speak to the narratives of countless Chicanas who are kept in the margins for not fitting the mold of the "ideal Chicana" that Chicanos set forth of what we’re supposed to be.