Week Eight Discussion Post: ¡Printing the Revolution! Virtual Conversation Series: From Black and Brown Solidarity to Afro-Latinidad

  

  ¡Printing the Revolution! Virtual Conversation Series: From Black and Brown Solidarity to Afro-Latinidad, as a discussion commission, aimed to concentrate and memorialize "the activist and the cultural dimensions of the civil rights–era [that] fueled solidarity movements between Black and Latinx artists, leaving a visible imprint in the graphic arts that continues to reverberate today (Smithsonian American Art Museum)." To accomplish such a feat, moderator Kaelyn Rodríguez enlisted the sageness and assistance of three artists that have been engrossed with these dilemmas across the decades. Participants include, Malaquias Montoya, a prolific strike poster artist, Favianna Rodriguez, an interdisciplinary artist, cultural strategist, and activist, and Moses Ros-Suárez, an artist, printmaker, architect, and a member of the Dominican York Proyecto GRAFICA, a collective of Dominican American graphic artists. Altogether, the creatives eloquently divulged into the experiences and circumstances that shaped them as individuals and formulated their artistic sense. All three left a profound impression on my conscious. Nevertheless, I was particularly moved by Malaquias Montoya himself, who had much to share about his discovery of Chicanisme and the devotedness he held for printmaking.

    Malaquias Montoya has his origins planted in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Nonetheless, he was raised by a single mother in a family of migrant farmworkers in the California Central Valley. His mother would come to have an earnest impact on him, as she is the one responsible for encouraging his artistic habits and helping him realize what justice was. Her greatest dream was for Montoya to create artworks that were grounded in a revolutionary sentiment and that ultimately helped serve the people. Influenced by this fervent dream, he took his talents to the Bay Area, and began creating posters, paintings, and screenprints that portrayed themes such as Palestine, immigration, police brutality, the death penalty, the Chicane Movement, the Zapatista Movement, Black and Brown solidarity, and more. Montoya went on to state in the discussion panel that along with his mother inspiring him to create pieces centered on people and social justice, he was also tremendously moved by Chicanisme and the Chicane Movement as a whole. He shared, "When we decided to call ourselves Chicanes [...] it was like I was reborn [...] It was like I was re-baptized." He obtained an incredible sense of power from a newfound name for an identity he always possessed. And in using that, he went on to create artworks that not only impacted the Chicane community, but that helped spread our messages of need and pride to the world. Hearing Montoya speak so fondly of his Chicane identity tugged at my heartstrings because in a similar way, I too felt a profound sense of strength and encouragement once I came to the conclusion that I am not just Mexican American, but that I am in fact a Xicana.     

    Malaquias Montoya went on to become one of the most celebrated and significant Chicane artists in the history of the Chicane Movement, and with great reason. At present, he still manages several of the workshops he established in East and West Oakland to teach Black and Brown youth the art of silk screening. And, he also holds a professorship at the University of California, Davis, teaching in both the Art and Chicane Studies Departments. It was an absolute pleasure to get to know Montoya through this incredible discussion, I hope to learn more from him in the near future.