As a person who is not an artist or does not participate in creative forms of expression, this class was a new experience for me. From the beginning, I was interested in taking this course because of the new experience and the art of the course being tied to my culture as well as focusing on women artists who are more often overlooked. Despite the fact that I have been in Chicanx courses before and that I am Chicanx, I was surprised to have been so unaware of the artists and their works that were discussed in this course.
Throughout the class, I appreciated being exposed to more Chicana artists as I had not realized how few Chicana artists I actually knew. It was not until we did the exercise towards the beginning of the class that I realized how few Chicana artists we collectively knew. This is why I thought it was really interesting to partake in the Wikipedia project. I learned a lot while researching the artist I chose, Anita Valencia, and in hearing about the artists my classmates chose. There was a lot of insight into how different artists connect to their own culture through the message of their works, materials used, etc. Given all of these different perspectives and unique relationships to their cultures, especially from more marginalized groups, the artists we learned about his quarter are able to offer a view of Chicanxs that is not hegemonic in nature. In fact, we learned how artists have historically used their art as a form to convey important messages and work with their communities to work towards material changes depending on the political issues of the time.
This class was a new experience for me as well. I learned so much and I happy about that. I agree with you about being Chicano and not being aware of our people and their great contributions to this world. Now that I'm aware of these artists I can tell others about them.
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