2020 Olsen, Eric- Week 2: Laura Aguilar

The artist I want to present is Laura Aguilar, a chicana who photographed queer marginalized bodies in her work. 

In the reading, "Out of the House, the Halo, and the Whore's Mask," author Alicia Gaspar de Alba examines the glaring lack of Chicana artists represented in the CARA Exhibition. Gaspar illustrates how this marginalization of Chicana voices is representative of a larger social,political phenomena in which Chicana ideas are first denied space then critiqued and valued with a differential, lesser, and sexist lense. The majority of works shown in the exhibition showcase heterosexual imagery and traditional cisgender, binary power structures between a male and a woman such as in the piece, Homegirl. Gaspar touches on the later separatist and queer aspects of the later 'Third-Wave' feminist movements but representation of these ideas appears to also be lacking in the exhibition. My question is: How can an exhibition claim to represent the entirety of Chicana experience without making space for queer and marginalized experiences within the community?