Chicana art
Chicana artists explore and interrogate traditional Mexican-American values and embody feminist themes through different mediums such as murals, painting, and photography.
[3] In 1976, co-founders Judy Baca (the only Chicana), Christina Schlesinger, and Donna Deitch established the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC).
The Great Wall of Los Angeles was the first project made by SPARC showcasing topics of erasure of ethnic groups in California and homophobia.
Judy Baca was the first Chicana to create a mural, Mi Abuelita,[8] she led the large-scale project for SPARC, The Great Wall of Los Angeles.
The mural was completed by Baca, Judithe Hernández, Olga Muñiz, Isabel Castro, Yreina Cervántez, and Patssi Valdez in addition to over 400 more artists and community youth.
During the creation of The Great Wall of Los Angeles Baca started putting women in leadership roles and trying to get them to become involved in the making of the mural.
[3] 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 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.
Asco's art spoke about the problems that arise from Chican@s unique experience residing at the intersection of racial, gender, and sexual oppression.
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.
[13][14] Laura Aguilar, known for her "compassionate photography," which often involved using herself as the subject of her work but also individuals who lacked representation in the mainstream: Chicanas, the LBGTQ community, and women of different body types.
In 1990, Aguilar created Three Eagles Flying, a three-panel photograph featuring herself half nude in the center panel with the flag of Mexico and the United States of opposite sides as her body is tied up by the rope and her face covered.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Alma López pushes the boundaries that confine the common woman, depicting La Virgen de Guadalupe in modern and controversial light as she paints.
[34] Like Alma Lopez, Yolanda López also focuses on themes of sexuality and the stigmas of women when she portrays La Virgen de Guadalupe.
[37] The Pocho Research Society of Erased and Invisible History (PRS) [38] was founded by Sandra de la Loza, the only known member in the organization, in 2001.
