Chicana art

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Chicana art emerged as part of the Chicano Movement in the 1960s. It used art to express political and social resistance^[1] through different art mediums. Chicana artists explore and interrogate traditional Mexican-American values and embody feminist themes through different mediums such as murals, painting, and photography. The momentum created from the Chicano Movement spurred a Chicano Renaissance among Chicanas and Chicanos. Artists voiced their concerns about oppression and empowerment in all areas of race, gender, class, and sexuality.^[2] Chicana feminist artists and Anglo-feminist took a different approach in the way they collaborated and made their work during the 1970s. Chicana feminist artists utilized artistic collaborations and collectives that included men, while Anglo-feminist artists generally utilized women-only participants.^[3] Art has been used as a cultural reclamation process for Chicana and Chicano artists allowing them to be proud of their roots by combining art styles to illustrate their multi-cultured lives.

The

In 1976, co-founders Judy Baca (the only Chicana), Christina Schlesinger, and Donna Deitch established the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC). Judy Baca had noticed a lack of awareness toward women of color in her time in Venice, California and realized the difficulties as being a woman of color who is both a feminist and a Latina which prompted the creation of SPARC.^[4] It consisted of studio and workshop spaces for artists. SPARC functioned as an art gallery and also kept records of murals. SPARC was created to support youth in areas where gangs are prevalent, which is why community youth was involved in the making of The Great Wall of Los Angeles. The Great Wall of Los Angeles was the first project made by SPARC showcasing topics of erasure of ethnic groups in California and homophobia. SPARC provides deeper context in the omission of underrepresented communities and elicits the exclusion that happens in U.S. history. SPARC is still active and encourages a space for Chicana community collaboration in cultural and artistic campaigns.

In 1989, Yreina Cervántez along with assistants Claudia Escobedes, Erick Montenegro, Vladimir Morales, and Sonia Ramos began the mural La Ofrenda, located in downtown Los Angeles. The mural, a tribute to Latina and Latino farm workers, features Dolores Huerta at the center with two women arched the history of Los Angeles and met with historians as she originally planned out the mural. The mural was halted after Carrasco refused alterations demanded from City Hall due to her depictions of formerly enslaved entrepreneur and philanthropist Biddy Mason, the internment of Japanese American citizens during World War II, and the 1943 Zoot Suit Riots.^[10]

Chicana entertainers have utilized the deconstructive qualities of performance art to challenge thought of character, identity, embodiment, and culture. Starting in the 1970s, Chicana artists began experimenting with street based performances that highlighted their unique role as cultural outsiders to white middle-class norms. Patssi Valdez was a member of the performance group Asco from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s. Asco's art spoke about the problems that arise from Chican@s unique experience residing at the intersection of racial, gender, and sexual oppression.^[3] Contemporary Chicana performance artists include Xandra Ibarra, Nao Bustamente, and Monica Palacios.

The Panza Monologues is a performance art piece built around the narratives of Chicana women. The Panza Monologues were composed by Virginia Grise and Irma Mayorga and presented as a solo performance by Grise herself. This performance art piece strikingly puts the panza ('belly') in the spotlight as an image that uncovers bits of their insight, viewpoints, lives, loves, misuses, and individual battles.^[11] The piece was intended to spotlight something that most times women are made to feel like should be hidden, making it seem shameful, and as a reminder that body images can greatly influence a woman's life.^[12]

Xandra Ibarra is Chicana performance artist who coined the term spictacles as a way to describe her performances of Mexican iconography that reveal the ways they function as racist tropes within performance cultures.^[13][14]

Delilah Montoya, a Chicana photographic artist, has an assortment of work that explores her interpretation of being a woman and understanding the world she had been placed in by incorporating the idea of mestizo, the combining of cultures. Montoya became politicized after her residency in South Omaha after the exposure of a multitudinous amount of cultures. Montoya made pieces deliberately to highlight the presence of the absent often inspired through the early years of the Chicano Movement.^[16] Further influences of the Civil Rights Movement allowed her to implore the idea of the reinvention of the self in terms of culture and history that encapsulates you.

Though the Chicano movement has passed, Chicanas continue to use art as a way to uplift their perspectives and celebrate Chicana voices. Young Chicana artists like Diana Yesenia Alvarado, who works with sculpture, create art that represent their culture and get little recognition.^[17] New art forms have risen as technology has begun to play a more vital role in daily life as artists like Guadalupe Rosales use platforms like Instagram as a part of their work.^[18] Rosales uses her role as an artist and an archivist to artfully collect photos and magazines of Chicanas from the 1990s. She portrayed her own understanding of growing up Chicana in East Los Angeles, a predominantly Latino area. On her account Veteranas y Rucas, her photos depict men in baggy pants and women with teased hair making their way through a time of anti-immigrant sentiments and gang violence. What started as a way for Rosales' family to connect over their shared culture through posting images of Chican@s history and nostalgia soon grew to an archive dedicated to not only 1990s Chican@ youth culture but also as far back as the 1940s.^[19] Additionally, Rosales has created art installations to display the archive away from its original digital format and exhibited solo shows Echoes of a Collective Memory and Legends Never Die, A Collective Memory.^[20] Rosales is the recipient of a 2019 Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship.^[21] She was the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's first Instagram artist in residence in 2017.^[22] Others like poet Felicia "Fe" Montes have gained popularity for their work in Chicana art for still other forms. Montes uses spoken word and slam traditions among other mediums to relate with her Latina following about identity.^[23] She reads her poetry in unconventional places and questions women's historically subservient and lower-serving roles than men. As she writes, she keeps the Chicano culture in Los Angeles in mind, through women's collectives like Mujeres de Maiz.

Over the years,

Alma López focuses on eradicating the stigmas surrounding women. She painted Our Lady in 1999, which portrays a modern Virgen de Guadalupe unclothed, supported by an unclothed "angel" with the wings of a monarch.^[26] La Virgen wears nothing but flowers, but stands powerfully with her hands at her hips and her face expressing confidence and seriousness. She has reimagined the traditional icon to explore the shamelessness she believes should stem from a woman of today who does not conform to the expectation of society. Especially since La Virgen is typically clothed from head to toe, this piece of art challenges the themes the original pushes forward, including modesty and subservience. She expresses the need for ownership of the indigenous body.^[27] Alma López also painted Lupe and Sirena in Love in 1999, which depicts the traditional Virgen de Guadalupe, nicknamed Lupe, lovingly embracing a mermaid.^[28] This is Alma López's commentary on Catholic Church teaching regarding sexuality and gender. She portrays a sacred individual romantically embracing another woman, directly challenging commonly followed beliefs that ostracize LGBTQ individuals. Alma López pushes the boundaries that confine the common woman, depicting La Virgen de Guadalupe in modern and controversial light as she paints. "Our Lady of Controversy: Alma Lopez's 'Irreverent Apparition'" (2011) demonstrates some of the angry responses she has received for her work. Irreverent Apparition is mixed media and is a sacrilegious depiction of La Virgen.

Ester Hernández references the sacred Virgen de Guadalupe in her painting, La Ofrenda (1988).^[36] The painting recognizes lesbian love and challenges the traditional role of la familia. It defies the reverence and holiness of La Virgen by being depicted as a tattoo on a lesbian's back. She also painted La Virgen de Guadalupe Defendiendo los Derechos de Los Xicanos (1975).^[37]

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Chicano artists have used their art to educationally reaffirm the historical events and varied experiences in their communities that have been rewritten in time.^[38]

The Pocho Research Society of Erased and Invisible History was founded by Sandra de la Loza, the only known member in the organization, in Los Angeles in 2002.^[39] The Pocho Research Society of Erased and Invisible History had a goal of uncovering hidden or otherwise distorted aspects of Chicano history and celebrating the forgotten figures of the Chicano movement.^[40] Pocho is a negative slang term used to refer to Chicano and Chicanas,^[41] but the Research Society used pocho to name the perspectives of Mexicans shaped by the social impacts of living in the U.S.^[40]

• Alma López
• Amalia Mesa-Bains
• Barbara Carrasco
• Carmen Lomas Garza
• Celia Álvarez Muñoz
• Celia Herrera Rodriguez
• Consuelo Jimenez Underwood
• Delilah Montoya
• Diane Gamboa
• Ester Hernandez
• Isis Rodriguez
• Judy Baca
• Juana Alicia
• Kathy Vargas
• Laura Aguilar
• Laura E. Alvarez
• Laura Molina (artist)
• Margarita "Mita" Cuaron
• Marta Sánchez (artist)
• Patricia Rodriguez (artist)
• Rita Gonzalez
• Sandra de la Loza
• Santa Barraza
• Santa Contreras Barraza
• Yolanda López
• Yreina Cervantez

• Mujeres Muralistas
• Social and Public Art Resource Center