Gavazza, Emmalee (Week 10: Presentations)

I really enjoyed Hector’s presentation on Martha Ramirez Oropeza. The fact that Ramirez Oropeza teaches at UCLA makes this an even more intriguing connection, knowing that we could have access to this artist and engage with her personally a lot more easily than we could for many of the other artists we’ve learned about so far. I love what she has done with the medium of murals. For me, murals are an especially important form of art because they change a public space into something that draws the viewer in and asks them to reconsider certain subjects or symbols. So to have an artist like Ramirez Oropeza using indigenous Nahuatl philosophy and theology in her murals, it creates a kind of visibility that these topics don’t always receive in the mainstream art world, which I think is really significant. I loved the image of Mother Earth regenerating everything and everyone at once, blowing life into the plants and the whole world. It feels very energetic and at the same time, extremely calming and peaceful, like the concept of Mother Earth herself. Learning that Ramirez Oropeza got her first exposure to murals during the Chicanx civil rights movement, I definitely feel like I can see the connection with some of her work today. There’s a sense of vibrancy and reverence for Nahuatl practices and beliefs that seem to align with the recognition that colonialism and post-colonial legacies has tried to diminish the importance of those traditions, but they come alive in Ramirez Oropeza’s artwork, like her 1989 mural preserving the history of the Chicana movement, and generally reifies the Chicanx diaspora. Hector did a great job introducing us to some of these themes in Ramirez Oropeza’s art, and I really appreciated learning more about her background & her philosophy as an artist.