Keossian, Alberto

 

Hello, my name is Alberto Keossian. My pronouns are he/him/his. I am a fourth-year transfer student and Art major with no established minor(s), but I have found myself always gravitating towards both Chicanx Studies and Anthropology. Both subjects seem to play a productive role in my practice when I attempt to investigate further understandings of my culture and its histories and their intersections within sociocultural anthropology whilst existing along contemporary Los Angeles. My practice used to prioritize working within sculpture and ceramics, however since attending UCLA, my practice has become much more multi-medium and performance-based. My most recent work has involved attempts at materializing my processing of familial traumas that had been put on the backburner for much too long.

I am interested in this class because of the potential of gaining stronger knowledge of Chacanx art and artists, particularly their practices and what charges them, how their works become materialized from idea, and the general histories of Chicanx art developing within Los Angeles. I find it to be a privileged opportunity to have access to a class like this while being of Mexican decent and while living in Los Angeles.

I was also really interested in the portion of the reading that covered the idea of embracing the concepts of Azlatan. I think personally, I find myself always questioning the notion of being an “American” and what exactly that entails given the quantity of colonial history associated with the title. This aspect of focusing on physical geographies and histories of stolen lands to bring about discussions of marginalization or immigration is extremely substantial in context. It brings me to think about abuses of power dynamics, how the U.S. is consisting of a bunch of already preexisting civilizations but were victim to colonial practices. There is an attempt to blur the realities or existences of these civilizations and attempt to convince that the U.S. is just the U.S. and not anything else. It is definitely a conversation that can become an extended discussion, but I feel that Yolanda Lopez’s Who’s the Illegal Alien, Pilgrim? lithograph work from this week’s reading is an example that really stimulates these discussions. The work appropriates an iconic American staple of the “I Want You” Uncle Sam posters and the recontextualizes it through modifying the imagery and text to bring questions among the particular words or phrases used here i.e. “illegal alien” and “pilgrim”.