Week 10- Reflection

Photo by John Fisch, San Antonio.

    I would first like to say that I am very grateful  that I had a chance to take this class. I really enjoyed this class and believe I have learned a lot about the history of Chicanx/Latinx art and now am familiar with a lot of Chicana and Latina artists. At the beginning of this class, as a collective, we were able to name 72 women artists but only 32 of these artists identified as being Chicana/Latina. By the end of this class we were able to name 64 Chicana/Latina artists. The process in which we did this was not only important but it follows within the history of the Chicanx art movement which supports and includes community engagement, outreach, and also activism. Creating a wiki page and presenting our artists allowed me to learn about a great of deal of artists, who some are creating artwork currently or are just beginning their art journeys, but also through it we engaged in activism by creating space so these artists could be acknowledge and put out there so more people can know about them and learn and see their artwork. The whole class learned of a new artists and some even were able to communicate and meet the artists themselves. 

    The one concept I learned that I especially found interesting was the term rasquachismo and domesticana. Rasquachismo being the term for a mentality, a way of being, or as Tomás Ybarra-Frausto describes, “an attitude or a taste.” This attitude and taste comes from the need and manifestation of resourcefulness, adaptability, and creativity and is found within the Chicanx community, where in America their lived reality is one that forces a person to have these qualities because they are not a part of the dominant culture and power dynamics. Domesticana is as much defiant and resourceful as rasquachismo, but this entails women specifically claiming space within environments they have been bounded to and rejecting constricting gender identities and roles within patriarchal Western and Chicano cultures, which happens to be domestic spaces. I learned many things from this class but this is one of the concepts that changed the way I view the world. I have seen this decorative style that I now can name as being rasquachismo and domesticana and I now understand the cultural significance and purpose it serves the people who practice this and live with this mentality.