Week 9: Sonia Romero

One of the artists that I enjoyed the most during the second week of presentations was Sonia Romero. Romero is a Chicana artist most known for her printmaking and paper-cut works. When we were first presented with the opportunity to choose an artist, I was planning on presenting on Sonia Romero, but I was beat to it. For this reason, I was interested when our classmate Daniela Flores presented on the three images that she had chosen. The one that stood out most to me was Straws (2018). Straws features a baby floating on a bed of plastic straws in the middle of the ocean wearing a plastic diaper. What really drew my attention to this piece was the colors - the blue and fluorescents - and the message behind the print. Romero created this in response to the ban on plastic straws. By placing the baby (who is actually her son Sky) on a bed of discarded straws, Romero draws attentions to the trash islands created by our past generation's trash. She draws inspiration for this from trash islands like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and consequently notes how future generations will have to deal with the growing environmental crisis. She bridges the past, present, and future by questioning the consequences that human pollution will have on our environment. Romero also criticizes how the ban on plastic straws stopped at straws; she questions why it doesn't also include plastic lids and the cup itself. Ultimately, all the work that went into this stencil was done by hand, and this impressed me greatly.