Transparent Migrations, by Amalia Mesa-Bains.

Honing in on the identity category “woman” also provides examples of intersectional listening, of coalitionally exploring meanings of “woman” in an effort to center the voices and experiences of multiply marginalized members. Listening, as an intentional rhetorical practice, can open space for recognizing both similarities and difference (see Ratcliffe, 2005; Starosta & Chen, 2000). Rather than a passive state, listening in this perspective is an actively engaged practice of co-constructing meaning across differences in identity and culture. One example of this engagement is a 2006 book by artist and Chicana activist Amalia Mesa-Bains and Black feminist writer and activist bell hooks. Formatted as a dialogue, the book presents their ruminations, their experiences, and their wisdom for the explicit purpose of countering simplistic narratives that pit people of color against each other or seek to erase their differences: “We do have differences, but our commonalities are just as strong, and they represent hope for resistance and freedom” (p. 3). This claiming of both difference and commonality, acknowledging the complexities of their own identities and the social groups of which they are a part, reveals how embracing a positional perspective of identity opens space for coalition building. It does so in part by refusing to demand that individuals must hold all perspectives, priorities, or experiences in common to join a coalition.

Rebecca Walton, Kristen Moore, and Natasha Jones, from Chapter 3 of Technical Communication After the Social Justice Turn: Building Coalitions for Action (2019)

Amalia Mesa-Bains, Queen of the Waters, Mother of the Land of the Dead: Homenaje a Tonatzin/Guadalupe, 1992, mixed-media installation including fabric drape, six jeweled clocks, mirror pedestals with grottos, nicho box, found objects, dried flowers, dried pomegranate, and potpourri.

Courtesy of the artist and Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco

👀

Amalia Mesa-Bains, Private Landscapes/Public Territories, 1996

(pt. 3) Notes on US Latinx art Forum

Institutions 

1. Inter-University Program for Latino Research (IUPLR)

Pamela Anne Quiroz, Ph.D.

Executive Director, IUPLR

Director, Center for Mexican American Studies, University of Houston

it was my first time hearing of this IUPLR program. 

2. BAMPFA - UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

“premier visual arts venue at the top U.S. public research university...” 

- Holds more than 28,000 works of art, specifically from 20th - 21st century work. 

- Founded in 1970, relocated in 2016. 

3. The Latinx Project

https://www.latinxproject.nyu.edu/

Notes to Self 

ARCHIVE LATINE ART - M.A

“WHAT IS THE DNA OF MY ARCHIVE” - AMALIA MESA-BAINS

“will Latinx art be taught under American art at universities?” - panelist

AMERICAN ART

LATIN AMERICAN ART

LATINX ART

El Museo Del Barrio Presents Amalia Mesa-Bains: Archaeology of Memory

Amalia Mesa-Bains, Venus Envy Chapter I: First Holy Communion, Moments Before the End (detail), 1993/2022. mixed-media installation including fabric, photographs, clothing, found objects, mementos, mirrors, found furniture, sand, dried petals, candles, laser prints on wall, pearls, and found images, 240 × 120 × 72 inches (609.6 × 304.8 × 182.88 cm). San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Courtesy of…

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Amalia Mesa-Bains, Circle of Ancestors, 1996, 7 chairs embellished with beads, gold leafing and mirror, Dimensions variable. Installation view: Hall of History in El Fin del Siglo: The Latina Worlds Fair, Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, 2000, Miami Florida.

https://towardcommoncause.org/artists/amalia-mesa-bains/

"Her work contemplates the meanings of multiculturalism as well as demographic shifts in today’s climate within the United States, building off of her own Mexican heritage. Each piece is in some form an exploration of her own Chicana identity seen through both an artistic and psychological perspective."

By offering unique aspects of her experiences and identities, she adds to a growing archive telling the perspectives of life in the U.S. as a Chicana woman. Narratives like this have historically been ignored, and by creating art that highlights the experiences of these individuals, it battles the forced erasure and assimilation placed on Mexican Americans.

Detail of Venus Envy Chapter I, by Amalia Mesa-Bains.

altares y ofrendas de Amalia Mesa-Bains

Famed Bay Area Chicana artist Amalia Mesa-Bains gets first retrospective show in Berkeley — Content Hub

Pioneering Bay Area artist Amalia Mesa-Bains’ evocative ‘altar installations’ at the Berkeley Art Museum explore feminist themes and Chicana culture. Famed Bay Area Chicana artist Amalia Mesa-Bains gets first retrospective show in Berkeley — Content Hub

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15 Latinx Artist Fellows Receive $50K Grants

Sprig 2022 Visiting Artist Tanya Aguiñiga and VPA Faculty Emerita, Amalia Mesa-Bains are among the recipients of this year’s grants, ​​funded by the Ford and Mellon Foundations.

Read full article here.

Amalia Mesa-Bains, An Ofrenda for Dolores del Rio, 1984 (revised 1991)

WHAT’S ON: Home—So Different, So Appealing. June 11, 2017 - October 15, 2017. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90036. 

Abraham Cruzvillegas, Autoconstrucción, 2010. Installation view, Home—So Different, So Appealing, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA. Courtesy LACMA.

www.sculpture-center.org

This post is part of our Domestic Spaces series. 

-ID

amalia mesa-bains’s installation art

#installation #art

Judith F. Baca

(September 20, 1946 - )

Her process as Muralist begins with meetings within the community to source stories. She then consults oral historians, scholars, cultural ethnographers, and, when she can, people who have lived through the events to be depicted.

“She has a way of making people step out of their own struggles into a larger understanding of what constitutes a life,”

said her longtime friend, artist Amalia Mesa-Bains.

In the 1970s, she became involved with the feminist community around the Woman’s Building, an education and exhibition space near MacArthur Park that took the Virginia Woolf essay “A Room of One’s Own” as its guiding principle.

In 1976, she cofounded the mural-making organization Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC).

The Great Wall of Los Angeles

She worked with the community on The Great Wall of Los Angeles. Begun in the late 1970s and still in progress, it is the longerst mural in the world, measuring more than a half mile long.

“If you can disappear a river, how much easier is it to disappear the history of a people?”

Baca was a woman, a Chicana, and a lesbian, at a time when the first two were thought of as mutually exclusive identities, and the third was not discussed at all.

“Judy calls herself a bridge, Professor of Latin American and Latinx Art Anna Indych-López said, “She claimed a space for women of color within feminism, and a space for feminism within Chicano and Chicana art.”

“She’s not trying to replace one canon with another, but in a way she’s visualizing history as a process of contestation in and of itself.”

Durón, Maximilíano. “Chicana Muralist Judith F. Baca Tells the Stories of California – ARTnews.Com.” ARTnews.Com, ARTnews.com, 19 Apr. 2017, https://www.artnews.com/artnews/news/concrete-history-chicana-muralist-judith-f-baca-goes-from-the-great-wall-to-the-museum-wall-8143/.