The artwork of Yolanda Lopez that I want to write about in this blogpost is Mexican Bag (2003). This piece was influenced by Yolanda’s son. Her son saw an image man is a sombrero under a tree sleeping and immediately classified him as a Mexican. Yolanda realized that mass media was naturalizing stereotypes and caricatures of Mexicans and that young people like her son were consuming these harmful or one dimensional conventional narratives of Mexicans (and other people of color). This realization lead her to create an exhibition of Mexicana objects and images (during the mid 80s to late 90s), that highlighted the negative stereotypes and caricatures the media created. With her exhibition, Yolanda wanted to show Chicano and Latino audiences how Western society commodifies Meixcan people, creates a fantasy surrounding Mexican culture and society, and perpetuates a touristic gaze. Her work with the touristic gaze and commodity continued with her work Mexican Bag (2003). However, with her piece Mexican Bag she is trying to reclaim the painted leather bag as something more than a cheap commodity for tourists by making it a detailed and well constructed design; creating something that Chicanos can reclaim. This painting reveals her complicated relationship with Mexican tourist commodities. In the book Yolanda wrote that even though many tourists buy these commodities to showcase that they have traveled, these commodities were one of the ways she was able to familiarize herself as a young girl with her Mexican culture. By painting just the painting detail of the bag with greater detail than a regular bag meant for tourists, she is in a way creating respect and honor for this bag because it's no longer just a commodity but as part of the Mexican culture (the craftsmanship behind the work and the history behind designs).
No comments:
Post a Comment