Gavazza, Emmalee (Week 7: Claudia E. Zapata)

This week’s reading on “The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics” was really illuminating to me as it brought up issues that I have not considered before, much less investigated in the depth and detail that Claudia Zapata brings to the subject. When Zapata quoted Terezita Romo as saying that Chicano artists’ work in the poster medium represented “the unofficial conscience of the country” in the 60s and 70s, I felt an immediate connection to that statement. I remember seeing this kind of art throughout my childhood, adolescence, and adult life growing up in Southern California, which is the actual location for many of the cultural phenomena that is explored in the work of these artists and activists. However, the transition from handmade physical prints to digitally mediated art is one that I’ve rarely considered, although I’ve definitely been impacted by some of its products. I was especially struck by Zapata’s continued emphasis on not only the technical and procedural changes that marked this time of innovation among Chicano artists, but also the consistency of purpose that serves as a connecting thread between the past and present: even as they benefit from, participate in, and drive the “technological exchange” that Zapata’s essay documents, Chicano artists have remained largely dedicated to using these various art media as a means of engaging the public in meaningful discourse about their culture, and particularly, its intersection with capitalist exploitation and social marginalization by the predominantly white mainstream. Seeing César Chávez standing next to artist Barbara Carrasco below her billboard-presented digital art, whose subject was a commentary on the ongoing exploitation of farmworker labor and the harmful effects of their exposure to toxic chemicals used by the grape-growers, really drove the point home for me that these artists aren’t just experimenting with new forms of expression, but actively seeking to leverage them to disseminate the activist content in their work to wider audiences as the country moves into the digital age.