Week 9: Barbara Carrasco

Barbara Carrasco is a Chicana muralist, born in El Paso, Texas, in 1955. She grew up in Mar Vista, Los Angeles which at the time was predominantly Mexican American and African American community. She received her associates degree from West Los Angeles College, then transferred to UCLA, where she received her Bacheors in Fine Arts. She was the first women editor of the UCLA newspaper La Gente. At age nineteen she met Cesar Chavez which began her association with the organization of United Farm Workers of America. She created banners and flyers for the organization. Much of her art is dedicated to Chicano civil rights movement and it critiques dominant cultural stereotypes. Her art is exhibited nationally and internationally. 

In 1981 she was commissioned by the Community Redevelopment Agency to create a sixteen-by-eighty-foot portable mural. It is titled LA History: A Mexican Perspective, it is on display at the Union Station in downtown Los Angeles. It deptics 51 scenes/ events that are relevant to the history of Los Angeles. The events are woven into the hair of a Latina women, and it's a timeline beginning with indigenous people, it also displays internment of Japanese American and Japanese people in the Western states during WWII, and Zoot Suit Riots. This mural was supposed to hang above a McDonald’s on Broadway in downtown L.A., but the CRA criticized this image telling her that she would need to remove events from the image because some were negative". Carrasco being the rebillious feminist that she is decided to not change her hardwork. So instead of having it displayed outside it now it hangs inside Union Station. She challenges the norms of what society wants her to do/ paint which makes her work even more inspiring.