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.

Lopez, Josue (Week 9)

Sand One

 I enjoyed Mara Higuera’s presentation on Chicanx artist Sand One. I had previously seen Sand One’s murals around different parts of Los Angeles, and I always enjoyed seeing her “dolls” and the peculiar style she uses to portray different aspects of femininity. Mara’s presentation was great because it contextualized San One’s art by putting a human face and story behind the creation of the “dolls”. The glamorous appearance of the dolls, with their long eyelashes, lipstick, and heavy makeup could be construed as vain and even consumerist by an audience. However, Mara tells us that the “dolls” visual aesthetic was actually influenced by Sand One’s memories of growing up with her single mother in East Los Angeles and her love for makeup and feminine beauty. Rather than seeing the “dolls” as objectifying women, Mara says that Sand One seeks to empower women by challenging the sexualized male gaze and reclaiming glamor and female beauty as an aspect of female identity rather than a social imposition. Sand One seeks to create community through her art, particularly for marginalized groups like the queer and sex workers community. Her art decenters the male gaze, which is represented by the sad-eyed “teddy bears” in her murals, portraying women in control of their bodies and their sexuality. I also found it fascinating how Sand One is a self-taught artist who developed her own style without the need to attend college or formal training. I find this fact to be truly empowering not just for female Chicanx artists, but for all artists who come from a disadvantaged socioeconomic background. Thanks to Mara’s great presentation I have found a new appreciation for Sand One’s murals, and will definitely change the way I see them as I drive around the city.

Lopez, Josue (Week 8)

 

I enjoyed Jaqueline Torres’ presentation on Chicanx artist Graciela Carrillo. The three works Jaqueline chose to present, worked well together to show Graciela Carrillo’s visual style and her influences. Jaqueline says that Carrillo’s art seeks to highlight the female identity and contest the sexist perspectives found in the Chicano Movement, the community, and in art. Carrillo’s art reenvisions gender dynamics by focusing on the importance of community and the collective to address inequality and demand social justice. The iconography of community solidarity is present in Carrillo’s work through her exploration of indigeneity, land, religion, and identity. Carrillo’s use of Latino cultural touchstones like maize, explore her vision of Latinidad, indigeneity, and the shared lived realities of Latinos in the United States and Latin America. According to Jaqueline, Carillo’s emphasis on the community can be seen through her work with the Mission District’s collective Las Mujeres Muralistas, whose goal is to bring the art world closer to underrepresented communities. Las Mujeres Muralistas seeks to advance community activism through their social and political art. I enjoyed Jaqueline’s presentation, and I learned a lot about Graciela Carrillo’s work.

Lopez, Josue (Week 7)

Immersive realities

I found Claudia Zapata’s essay The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics, 1965 to Now extremely insightful in the way she analyses Chicanx artists’ use of new technological mediums to engage with social movements, contest social subjectivities of Latinos, and reframe Chicanx identity for the twenty-first century.  One of the things I found interesting was her discussion on the impact Web 2.0 has had on the ways Chicanx artists create and disseminate art. Zapata says that Web 2.0 is defined by the unprecedented levels of interactivity it allows between online users. Chicanx artists can now create “born-digital” art that is both digitally created and distributed. Artists are now able to easily engage with audiences directly and create and foster communities around social issues. By having a medium through which artists can directly engage with audiences, traditional institutions like the museum are subverted, and new unrestricted dialogues can form. Zapata also talks about newer technological mediums like augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) as platforms where Chicanx artists can create works that have the potential to fully immerse audiences in the art to embody the work.

 Recent talks about the potential of these new technological mediums like Facebook’s Metaverse are promising and offer a new level of interaction never before seen. However, as Zapata points out, artists should continue to seek the subversion of power, even while using these new technologies.  As tech companies continue to grow into powerful behemoths, artists should create art that contests not only immediate and contemporary social issues but also the modern technological apparatus and its dissemination algorithms.

Lopez, Josue (Week 6)

Se Corre (2019), Xandra Ibarra

 

I was fascinated by Xandra Ibarra’s work. In particular, I found myself drawn to the Pastie Series This Is The End. As I looked over the oversized pasties I began asking myself if I had ever seen anyone wearing similar-looking pasties in my own life. To be sure, I had seen people wearing pasties before, but I have never seen anyone wearing the kind of pasties that have a “tail” at the tip. Despite never seeing anyone wearing those sorts of pasties, my mind began to imagine the body that would wear this style of pasties. I felt transported to a different time, a different place, a club or cabaret came to mind. I wasn’t so much imagining the body wearing the pasties, but I was imagining the setting and the context under which that body would wear those pasties. There’s something alluring about imagining a different time than the one you inhabit, however, it also forces you to ask yourself why our minds may romanticize a different time and place? The set of pasties titled Se Corre (2019), are almost hypnotic, drawing attention to the very tip of the pasties, while the three blue circles around it force the gaze outward to explore what’s beyond sexuality. My question to Xandra Ibarra is, what experience/idea made you want to explore the “imagined body” through pasties?

Lopez, Josue (Wiki Draft for Dalila Paola Méndez)

 Dalila Paola Méndez (TBD)  is a Latina visual artist. Her works span several different types of media including photography, painting, serigraph, and film. Méndez is known for centering female, Latina, queer, and indigenous perspectives in her work.

Biography (or Early Life and Education) 

Dalila Paola Méndez was born in Los Angeles, California to Guatemalan and Salvadoran parents. As a child, Méndez spent a lot of her time in Los Angeles’ public libraries where she developed her love for the arts. Her first medium was photography, using her 35mm camera to explore color and subjects.

Dalila graduated from the University of Southern California, earning her BA in International Relations. Upon graduating, Méndez joined the Los Angeles Unified School District as a Bilingual Teacher.  After leaving her position in the LAUSD, Méndez co-founded Womyn Image Makers (WIM) in 1999.

Art (or Notable Works or Selected Works. Also Exhibitions, Projects, Collections) 

• Mosquita y Mari (2012), film.

• LA Re-Imagined(2010), painting.

• We the Resilient (2020), mixed media on canvas.

References 

1. ^ Díaz-Sánchez, Micaela Jamaica. “RE-MAPPING QUEER DESIRE(S) ON GREATER LOS ANGELES: The Decolonial Topographies of Aurora Guerrero and Dalila Paola Méndez.” Chicana/Latina Studies, vol. 17, no.1, 2017, pp. 94-117. https://thisbridgecalledcyberspace.net/FILES/4397.pdf 

2. ^ Alvarez, Sandra and Susan Zepeda. “Interview with Womyn Image Makers: A Colectiva of Queer Indígena Visionaries.” Spectator: USC Journal of Film and Television Criticism. Chicana Spectators and Mediamakers, vol. 26, no.1, 2006, pp. 127-134. https://cinema.usc.edu/archivedassets/097/15711.pdf  

3. ^ Self Help Graphics & Art. The Very Very Very Long Day. 22 August. 2020. 1-62. Web. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5953d7f83a0411214b269873/t/5f445182d139e66a86feb536/1598312850170/SHG_Verylongday_exhibition_catalog_2020_v4_compressed.pdf  

Further reading 

•  Roberta M. Munroe. How Not to Make a Short Film: Secrets from a Sundance Programmer. https://pdf.zlibcdn.com/dtoken/6e5d0689f1517a5328ecea289358c8b7/How_Not_to_Make_a_Short_Film_Secrets_from_a_Sunda_854674_(z-lib.org).pdf 

External links 

• https://www.dalilamendez.com/ 

• Artist Spotlight: Dalila Paola Mendez (lacommons.org)

Lopez, Josue (Week 5: Carmen L. Garza)

Carmen Lomas Garza, The Missionaries, 1984.

 I found Carmen Lomas Garza’s painting The Missionaries (Fig. 28, P. 42) extremely interesting because of its depiction of life in the missions during the Spanish colonial period. The painting is part of a series called History of California Water: The Everyday Use of Water created as part of Garza’s first public art commission from the San Francisco Water Department (39). The painting centers the Mission San Francisco de Asis in the background, drawing attention to its pristine white color and towering front columns that guide the eyes upward to the center cross on its roof. A Franciscan missionary stands outside of the church, while another missionary rides a horse while pulling a tied calve behind him. In contrast, in the foreground, you see two vignettes of Native Americans toiling away on agricultural fields and making adobe bricks while another missionary supervises them.

The painting simultaneously depicts a true but romanticized view of life for Native Americans inside the California Missions. The labor Native Americans provided was crucial for all aspects of life in the mission. Native American labor built the missions, created irrigation systems, cultivated and harvested their fields, and took care of the cattle that made the missions the wealthiest institutions in the state. Yet despite their contributions, the brutal treatment of Native Americans by the Franciscan missionaries is often left out or deemphasized in historical narratives about the Mission system. Carmen Lomas Garza’s The Missionaries manages to capture the exploitative aspect of mission life but does not critique it. Nevertheless, as Constance Cortez points out because these paintings were part of a series produced for the San Francisco Water Department, “it can be understood that the artist has deliberately forgone the autonomy associated with earlier canvases” (Cortez, 40-41), instead choosing to focus on water and its vital usage in Northern California.

Lopez, Josue (Week 4: Rasquachismo)

In his 1989 essay, Tomas Ybarra-Frausto says that rasquachismo is “neither an idea nor a style but more of an attitude or a taste” (85). Rasquachismo is a sensibility, a lived experience that comes from an “underdog” perspective. Rasquachismo is a spirit of resilience and resourcefulness in the face of the material limitations present in the working-class barrios. Chicano artists use everyday materials to create a highly decorative, unrestrained aesthetic that “seeks to subvert and turn ruling paradigms upside down” (85). In rasquachismo, Chicano artists and intellectuals rediscover identity, meaning, and solidarity through the elevation of everyday life practices and objects. Ranquachismo rejects established paradigms of “high” art, for representations that center the working-class experiences and conditions of the Chicano community. 

If rasquachismo represents resilience and resourcefulness, a fregado pero no jodido attitude, then domesticana takes the rasquechismo attitude one step further by also reinterpreting and reclaiming the domestic space of Chicanas. As Amalia Mesa-Bains points out, domesticana sensibility “posits an approach to feminine space in the contemporary that reconstructs aspects of the domestic, the sacred, and the spiritual” (95). The domesticana aesthetic emancipates Chicanas from dominant gender roles, allowing for highly decorative representation of everyday Chicana experience that subvert Anglo-American cultural identity and challenge patriarchy.

Although I was unaware of the meaning of rasquachismo and domesticana until reading Tomas Ybarra-Frausto’s and Amalia Mesa-Bains’ essays, almost immediately, I understood the meaning of the terms because of my background. Growing up in el barrio of South Los Angeles, my family was always resourceful, repurposing old wood to make new furniture, using old jars to store random items around the house, etc. We would make do with what we had at hand. This rasquache attitude has given me a greater appreciation for the material things I have, but more importantly, it has given me a sense of pride for my community and our culture.

Brown sugar is stored in a Kirkland chocolate container.

Lopez, Josue: Research Abstracts for Dalila Mendez

Alvarez, Sandra and Susan Zepeda. “Interview with Womyn Image Makers: A Colectiva of Queer Indígena Visionaries.” Spectator: USC Journal of Film and Television Criticism. Chicana Spectators and Mediamakers, vol. 26, no.1, 2006, pp. 127-134. https://cinema.usc.edu/archivedassets/097/15711.pdf 

An interview with Womyn Image Makers (WIM), Maritza Alvares, Dalila Mendez, Claudia Mercado, and Aurora Guerrero by Sandra Alvarez and Susy Zepeda from the Women of Color Research Cluster and Queer Latina Network in Santa Cruz. The interview took place in 2006 at the UC Santa Cruz 12th annual Women of Color Film and Video Festival. Womyn Image Makers (WIM) is a network of activist filmmakers and artists whose work centers Chicanx, Latinx, female, and queer perspectives through the visual arts. Womyn Image Makers (WIM) discuss their early collaborations beginning in 1999 and their work as community organizers in Boyle Heights through a Circulo de Mujeres. Dalila Mendez, the in-house production designer, shares how she explores the legacies of indigenismo and matriarchy through her visual art in films like Viernes Girl and Pura Lengua.

Díaz-Sánchez, Micaela Jamaica. “RE-MAPPING QUEER DESIRE(S) ON GREATER LOS ANGELES: The Decolonial Topographies of Aurora Guerrero and Dalila Paola Méndez.” Chicana/Latina Studies, vol. 17, no.1, 2017, pp. 94-117. https://thisbridgecalledcyberspace.net/FILES/4397.pdf 

Re-Mapping Queer Desire(s) on greater Los Angeles explores the works of film director Aurora Guerrero and visual artist Dalila Mendez as visions of decolonial topographies in Los Angeles. Guerrero and Mendez challenge normative representations of the city by featuring the experiences of queer, working-class, and immigrant women in their art. Their art highlights the cultural and economic impact of gentrification and environmental racism on Chicanx and Latinx communities. Guerrero’s and Mendez’s visual aesthetic is used as a framework to analyze contemporary articulations of queer Latina subjectivities in Los Angeles. Their collaboration on the film Mosquita y Mari, a story about a queer Latina teenager from Huntington Park, is an exploration of these subjectivities. 

Munroe, Roberta M. How Not to Make a Short Film: Secrets from a Sundance Programmer. New York: Hachette Books, 2014. https://pdf.zlibcdn.com/dtoken/6e5d0689f1517a5328ecea289358c8b7/How_Not_to_Make_a_Short_Film_Secrets_from_a_Sunda_854674_(z-lib.org).pdf 

Chapter six of How Not to Make a Short Film: Secrets from a Sundance Programmer, explores how to best navigate the casting process for a short film. Particularly, it focuses on good techniques for directing actors. Aurora Guerrero, a queer Chicanx director, is asked to provide some insight on how to best direct actors to obtain the desired performance. Guerrero works closely with her actors to build trust, allowing them to better embody the characters they’re playing. This technique has been crucial to her continued collaboration with Dalila Mendez and Womyn Image Makers (WIM) in films like Aqui Estamos y No Nos Vamos.

Self Help Graphics & Art. The Very Very Very Long Day. 22 August. 2020. 1-62. Web. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5953d7f83a0411214b269873/t/5f445182d139e66a86feb536/1598312850170/SHG_Verylongday_exhibition_catalog_2020_v4_compressed.pdf 

The Very Very Very Long Day, was a virtual group exhibition curated by Marvella Muro at the Self Help Graphics & Art community arts center in East Los Angeles. The exhibition opened on August 22, 2020. The works in the exhibition document the blurring of time, as days, turned into months during the mandatory quarantine to combat the Covid-19 pandemic. Some of the works in the exhibition reflect the social anxieties and frustrations that surfaced during the summer of 2020. The growing demands for social justice challenged visual artists to reimagine the meaning of normalcy in a post-pandemic world. For the exhibition, Dalila Mendez created We the Resilient, a mixed media collage on canvas celebrating the lives of the victims of police brutality. Mendez’s work challenges the viewer to fight for their rights, to be determined and resilient in the face of oppression.

Lopez, Josue (Week 3)

I grew up in an evangelical Christian household. My parents were moderately religious, so I remember often going to church with them, sometimes three times a week, and spending Sundays mornings in church receiving religious classes. However, I had many school friends who, unlike me, were Catholic. I remember some of them wore rosaries around their necks. Seeing the reverence with which my friends talked about their faith and the Virgin of Guadalupe, imprinted in my young mind the spiritual and social importance of the Virgin of Guadalupe to my community. Growing up, I came to realize that for many people in my community, the Virgin of Guadalupe represents something bigger than Catholicism or religion. She also represents a connection to their culture, their language, and their ancestral lands. The Virgin of Guadalupe holds such a sacred place for Chicanx and Latinx people because her image transcends religious and cultural barriers and speaks to the common, unifying experience of Latinx people in the United States. Like Latinx people in the U.S., the Virgin of Guadalupe has also been racialized as foreign. Despite this, Chicanx and Latinx communities and artists challenge these narratives by reinterpreting and reenvisioning the Virgin of Guadalupe not only as a religious and cultural symbol but also as a symbol of female empowerment and social justice.

Mendez, Dalila

2.Depaz, Melissa 3. Cruz, Amina

Lopez, Josue

Hello everyone, my name is Josue Lopez. My preferred pronouns are he/him. I am a fourth-year History student and this is my last term before graduating from UCLA. I am taking this course to expand my knowledge of the current conditions that affect the lives of Chicanx and Latinx people in the U.S.

As a curatorial intern for the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, this past summer I researched for an upcoming exhibition focused on Chicanx filmmakers and artists. The experience introduced me to the wonderful world of Chicanx/Latinx research and ethnic studies. I enrolled in CCAS 10B and CCAS M155A during the summer to immerse myself in the literature, and I hope this class will add to my understanding of how art is used to express, deconstruct, and challenge the dominant Latinx narratives.