Banuet, Haziel (Week Ten)

Throughout the period of this course I have learned so much about Chicana/x artist and many artist that are local artist whose work has been present in surrounding communities that I have not been aware of. I have also enjoyed this Wikipedia article because I have learned more about art that is significant in the Chicanx community. For my article I wrote on Claudia E Zapata and the work they have created. I initially have never heard of Claudia, but through the course of this class I have come to love their work.

In respect for the students who presented last week, I have included one artist who I enjoyed learning about.

One of my favorite artist from this last week presentations was Emilia Cruz. Emilia Cruz is painter a muralist from San Diego. She was born in 1993 and is the daughter of immigrants, making her first generation. Cruz began her artist journey at a young age and had the support of her aunt growing up. Her aunt was the first to encourage her to pursue art as a career, and with the help of her aunt, she was able to convince her parents on her desired career path.

Emilia Cruz is well-known for her commission Netflix artwork. Two of her pieces are feature and/or created in the Netflix shows Gentle-fied (2020) and Selena: the Series (2020).

In this presentation two art pieces stood out to me. The first piece I am unsure of the title but it depicts two wrestlers kissing. This is one of the pieces commissioned by Netflix for their series Gentle-fied (2020).  The reason this piece stands out to be is because it takes wrestlers out of a box of being seen as maybe emotionless and tough all the time. I also believe this piece criticizes the hispanic community’s idea of Machismo.

The second piece that also spoke to me was titled "Am I Too Dark." In this piece Cruz had her younger sister pose with a few barbies. According to Cruz, this piece criticizes the beauty standards our society has on women and judges how we are told at a young age what we are supposed to look like. I loved this piece the most because Cruz was not afraid to speak on these issues and talk about how this effects younger girls.