Week 2 - Yolanda López - Esparza, Gregory

It was inspiring to read about Yolanda López’s upbringing and being raised by single women that shaped much of her identity and resilience to make nontraditional choices in her personal life. López’s rasquache sentiments evolved out of economic necessity and became a part of her artistic expression. Her rasquache aesthetic was shaped predominantly by her mother and grandmother, but also in ways from the men in her family that refurbished things from the raw materials or fixed old engines, while the food made by the grandmother was from their garden, and to the fashion sense of sewing learned from her mother; it all factored into her art. It was eye-opening as well to hear her story about listening to her articulate cohorts speak at their convocation, only to be emasculated by a fragile white man. However, this act lights a fire within López that is justified and served only to sharpen her own gaze at the world and to make art that fought for a world she wanted to live in.

Her opportunity to learn from Black Panther minister of culture, Emory Douglas was invaluable too. I read this as the equivalent to an Ivy-league type revolutionary mentorship that was lock in-step with her interests in Third World feminism. We get a strong sense of her fight López understood ideology could bring all movements together; and as López was anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, antisexist, and anti-heterosexist, within all these modes she had a quest for universal equality (29-33). With that sentiment, it is easy to understand how López’s artwork is not passive and defies that patriarchal lens. This is why Davalos described how, “López believed that art should serve the people” (31). In other words, for López art must have purpose rather than to be done only for leisurely gaze. Lastly, I thought it was a radical move to not sign her artwork, which went in line with her anti-capitalist ethos.

My question to Dr. Alicia Gaspar de Alba:

With Yolanda López’s artwork, when she chose to not sign her work, was this a strategy so no one would question whether it was made by a woman or a man? In other words, so that the artwork and political statements she made in the art would stand on their own merits devoid of the conversation about the art being gendered?

Was she the first artist from the Chicana/o community to do this?

Thank you for your time.