week 9: chicana futurism

In the reading, Chicana futurism is best described next to the art of Marion Martinez, and how she used traditional folk art and used state of the art computer technology. Creating and transforming artworks that still testify to the dynamism and malleability of chicana art and cultural identity with a modern day new medium.  Of Of course the art works that have the most history and are more traditional found happen to be religious works and that is exactly what many chicana artists focus on such as Marion Martinez, Ester Hernandez and Yolanda Lopez. Chicana futurism in fact is a modern form of art that is shared and collected by many, the only reason some would not adhere to the chicana futurism is because they come from deep poverty. Those who live in deep poverty are exempt from certain modernizations and so they stick to more of a traditional lifestyle. 

Marion Martinez is the only one who made art using hardware from computers whereas everyone else in the exhibition of Cybre Arte used only software. Since Martinez had an admiration of computers and technology she explains how she used hardware for chicana futurism to appreciate the discarded treasures, many of which are obsolete as soon as they are made available. It is her way of recycling technology. Although she works with making modern day traditional art she still considers herself a folk artist because she uses objects from her surroundings. Her work "challenges racist, classists, and sexist, stereotypes that primitivtize Hispanas and excludes them from the domains of science, technology, and reason as it reshapes the tools of the information age". 

Chicanofuturism can also be stemmed and compared to afrofuturism which "reflects african diasporic experience and at the same time attends to the transformations that are the by-product of new media and information technology." It creates original narratives of identity, technology, and the future and offers critiques of the promises of prevailing theories of technoculture, which in turn is very similar to both folk art and chicana futurism. Which is why Martinez defines Chicana Futurism as chicano cultural production that attends to cultural transformations resulting from new and everyday technologies that excavates, creates, and alters narratives of identity, technology, and the future; that interrogate the promises of science and technology; and that redefines humanism and the human.