Lopez, Josue (Week 10)

Xandra Ibarra, Spictacle II

 I really enjoyed discovering the work of Chicanx artist Xandra Ibarra. Before she came to our class as a guest speaker, I looked through her website to get a sense of her work and about the themes and subjects she engages with. I found her work to be engaging and unapologetic about challenging the dominant images of Latinas, women, gender norms, and representations of ‘high art.’ I wrote a blog post about her pastie series This Is The End, specifically Se Corre (2019) because I found it said a lot about the gender dynamics found in cabaret dancing. Cabaret dancing can sometimes objectify women and sexualize their performance with a wardrobe, like pasties, that is meant to elicit those feeling from the audience. Xandra Ibarra explores this idea by creating oversized pasties that tower over the audience’s heads, inverting the power dynamic, while also reclaiming the artistic/performative component of the dance. Her Spictacle series is an amazing exploration of the dominant images of Chicanx women in the United States. Here, Ibarra challenges those images by presenting them in an exaggerated way that is meant to remind that audience of the unrealistic, exaggerated, and even comical stereotypes that Chicanx women are boxed in. Her performance challenges those stereotypes by presenting them in such a way that the audience can’t help but realize the absurdity of placing such restrictive gender norms on multi-dimensional human beings.

When Xandra Ibarra was a guest speaker in our class, I was able to hear her story and have greater context for the art she creates. I connected with many of her ideas and life stories, which help me understand her work and view it from a different perspective. She was very down-to-earth and unapologetic about her voice which made me appreciate the work that goes into creating art. Overall, besides my chosen artist for the Wiki article, Xandra Ibarra was my favorite artist to have discovered.