Anwar Dababo - Blog 1 - Week 1

 Dababo, Anwar 

My name is Anwar Dababo. I’m from San Mateo, CA and I am a 3rd year Junior transfer at UCLA, majoring in Business Economics. My preferred pronouns are he/him, I would like to be called Anwar. Ever since I was a child, I’ve always had a passion for sports cars and art. I remember my parents taking me to car shows and art museums since I can remember! My love for cars grew when I began to learn more about my father’s business, in which he runs an auto body shop, and my love for art grew substantially when my kindergarten teachers handed me paper and a palette. I love to diversify my passion for art and love to observe the evolution of the different types of arts/murals not just through the artists we grew up learning at young ages, but different, ethnic artists from around the world. My goals in life are to run my own auto body shop and also get into the real estate business. However, I want to incorporate my interest in art and hope to run a non-profit organization in order to allow all walks of life to place their beautiful artwork in a gallery, where anyone and everyone can observe them. Moreover, I sometimes fantasize about purchasing artwork and placing them in my future auto body shop office! My hopes for this class is to learn about the artwork of Chicanx artists and how they influenced the art world. It’s fascinating to me how a person or persons can evolve the world in a substantial footprint. In this case, with art, I think that the creative thinking of one artist influences others, evolving the way artists think about their next canvas project. I hope to learn how these Chicanx artists changed the world, alongside with any barriers that almost stopped them. 

Reading the short essay, “Printing and Collecting The Revolution”, by E. Carmen Ramos, I was really fascinated by the way Chicanx artists evolved their way of diversifying their audience by incorporating terms that shy away from the ways we interpret art. For example, Carmen exemplifies that the Chicanx artists “directly engage audiences without relying on traditional art-world structures…”. It amazes me that these Chicanx artists changed their way of what we view as art, and using graphical visuals to state a message to society rather than using “posters”, a traditional way of how artists spread a message during a revolution. Secondly, the way Carmen expresses how Chicanx artists “use graphic arts a synonym for printmaking”, indicates how simple terms are used in the art world and diversify one’s interpretation of what art really is. Terms like those, as Carmen would say it, opens opportunities on the definition of art, opening new ways for an individual to express themselves; nonetheless, I agree with Carmen on the idea that “visual culture [is not] usually the focus of art museum exhibitions or museum collections”.