The subject of the presentation I chose to write about for this week is Carmen Linares-Kala. She is a San Diego based muralist and spiritual practitioner; this stuck out to me as the artist on which I am writing my Wikipedia project is also a California based muralist. Since most of her work is in public places, the majority of Carmen Linares-Kala's work is on display in her hometown of San Diego. The artists' emphasis on the accessibility of her work stuck out to me; especially when the presenter mentioned that most of her work had not been displayed in museums so that they could be shared with the general public instead. The presenter mentioned that Camren Linares-Kala feels a strong connection to her work which is why she does not sell it, as well as that she does not sell her work out of respect for her subjects. This raised questions for me about the ethics of commercial artwork; in another class in which I am currently enrolled, SPAN 44, we learned about Diego Rivera's role in the Chicano mural movement and how many of his works were modeled by Luz Jimenez –an indigenous model and intellectual. Hearing about Carmen Linares-Kala's hesitancy to profit off of her own artwork out of respect to her subjects made me reevaluate Diego Rivera's decision to profit off of Luz Jimenez's image, and made me wonder if he shared some of his financial success with her. A few facts about Carmen Linares-Kala's work which stood out to me were: that one of her murals took 26 years of planning for two weeks of painting and that her murals contain imagery (ex. a blue heart) in remembrance for the native people whose land on which she lives.
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