Week 6: Chicana Futurism

 Xandra Ibarra’s work resonated heavily with me. Whether this is because her Bay Area education resonates with my point of view or for other reasons, I found that her work puts abstract concepts I’ve discussed with friends and for which I’ve not been able to find words into visual form. Her installation, “Ashes of Five Feminist of Color Texts,” particularly struck a chord with me. The installation was exhibited in the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in 2020. I grew up in Berkeley and spent many hours in this museum throughout high school looking at art, studying, and spending time with friends. Although I feel a personal connection to the installation because of the location, what really stuck out to me was the explanation of Ibarra’s intent behind the exhibit. Her statement that the installation was meant to highlight how femenist of color texts have been used by those in power to “facilitate performances of ‘consciousness’ which affirm ‘diversity’ without accounting for power” stuck out to me as exceptionally true. As someone who grew up in Berkeley, I’ve witnessed these types of performances many times. Ibarra’s statement that by using these writers for this use their works had been “misinterpreted and vacuumed of their significance.” The way in which the intellectualism and experience of feminist intellectuals of color has been co-opted by corporations and institutions to alleviate their own guilt and influence their public image is one of my biggest pet peeves, which Ibarra put into words perfectly, and expressed perfectly through this exhbit. I did not complete this blog post before her visit to our class, but if I had I would have wanted to ask her how her education in the Bay Area affected the subject matter she chose to focus on throughout her career as an artist.