week 10 - course reflection

 this class has been a fun way to get introduced to chicana artists which i didn't know about before. one of the readings that felt the most impactful was the one from i believe week 8 or 9 where indigeneity museums and art was discussed. as someone who only has knowledge of the spiritual significance of la Virgen de Guadalupe through other chicanx classes at UCLA i also really enjoyed getting to understand more of her cultural community context, and how chicana artists use la Virgen to define and redefine themselves, and their visual language. the presentations were extremely informative and my personal favorite part was getting to learn about more public art, artists. to me, public art is essential because it really opens up art to the community. museums and the american perspective on who is an artist and who makes are is curated to mainly represent white artists. gaining access to a museum as an artist is already difficult due to this but on top of that as a viewer, museums are often costly, outside of accessible places, or used to gentrify an area, making it really hard to even have access to art institutions in the first place. public art feels like an acknowledgment of this and brings the art to the people. i think there is also often an expectation that men make public art/graffiti, so it was really exciting and i think it important to see latina women being included in that narrative. overall im glad that i got to see so many works of art which exemplified our shared culture and individual experience and i want to continue learning more from the class's Wikipedia pages.