Current
Work Artist Statement
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Of primary importance is my view of art as a serious and responsible vehicle for exploring issues of Chicana ideology. In my own evolving critical study, I question my identity as a Chicana in occupied America, and articulate the experience of a minority woman. I work to understand the depth of my spiritual, political, emotional and cultural icons, realizing that in exploring the topography of my conceptual homeland, Aztlan, I am searching for the configurations of my own vision.
My approach to art makes use of documentary methods. With each project I study the discourse by examining the issues. The projects, I produced, Crickets in My Mind an artist book in collaboration with Cecilio Garcia Camarillo a Chicano Poet, Saints and Sinners a photo installation exploring the nature of the Hermandad (a penitental brotherhood), Codex Delilah: Six Deer a Journey From Mechica to Chicana, From the West: Shooting the Tourist, Corazon Sagrado/ Sacred Heart, Las Lloronas a collaboration with printmaker Asta Kuusinen, To Be Invisible and La Guadalupana.
El Corazon Sagrado/ the Sacred Heart is a collection of collotypes that portrays Albuquerque’s Chicano Community. The images explore the manifestation of the Sacred Heart as a cultural icon. This symbol is a spiritual icon that is embedded in the religious fabric of my culture. Basing my research on my own Mestiza perspective, I have concluded that this Baroque religious symbol expressed shared cultural religious patterns that connote a syncretic relationship between European Catholicism and Aztec Philosophy.
When the Aztec Indians, for example, fashioned the bleeding heart on the Franciscans' coat of arms, they included their own stylized circular glyphs. For the Indians these glyphs represented the blood flowing from the sacrificial victims. Consequently, this representation could no longer exclusively be considered the heart of Christ in the sense previously intended by the European monks. Likewise, because of the new Christian definitions, the glyphed bleeding heart was not simply the sacrificial heart the Indians were being taught to forget. The Baroque Sacred Heart in the Americas is an icon that resulted from an encounter. It is not purely Indian in content and never completely European in its form. Rather it is a hybrid of two diverse cultures that clashed and bonded at a particular historic moment and created the foundation for religious syncretism.
My approach to the Sacred Heart was to involve the community in a contemporary manifestation of the heart as a cultural icon. As a photographic printmaker, I photographed members of the Chicanos community with an 8x10 view camera. The portraits were shot in a constructed space and reproduced as Collotypes. The constructed space was the result of collaboration with Chicano youth (aerosol artists) who spray-painted images on the studio wall. These murals were used as backdrops for the portraits.
The installation Saints and Sinners is an investigation of Chicano spiritualism. This investigation is part of a study to define a personal and collective identity. Spiritualism, a binding force of the Chicano homeland, is crucial to maintaining the mental boundaries of Aztlan. The study deals with iconography used by the Hermandad for the transmutation of sin to absolution. The exhibit expresses the universal themes of life, death and salvation.
The glass jar series a component of Saints and Sinners refers to the alchemist's method of transmutation. The alchemist places a material together with a catalyst in order to change it into a superior material. The jar symbolizes the corporeal and the materials placed inside the soul. Like a being, each jar is unique and possesses the potential for transformation. The exterior environment in which the jars float represents the land as altar space. Just as the cathedral provided a spiritual uplift for the Western Man, the land is the uplift for the Indigenous American. The exterior landscapes echo the interior ambiance of the jar.
Within the framework of a feminist vision The Codex Delilah: A Journey From Mexicatl to Chicana approaches the Spanish/Indian encounter from a mestizaje perspective. As a Chicana, I am conscious of how the historical contributions of women have been undermined or completely ignored. This project attempts to correct that injustice by rethinking the traditional interpretation of the European/ Native Encounter. The narrative of this artist book is viewed from the perspective of Six Deer, a fictional Mayatec young girl from the Tutuepec region near present day Mexico City. From her home to the nuclear weapons laboratories in New Mexico, the codex details Six Deer's journey of enlightenment.
As she journeys "pal norte", towards Aztlan (the spiritual home of her ancestors) Six Deer also travels forward in time meeting well-known women of the Chicano folklore tradition. Each of these characters informs her of the long and negative historical processes that were initiated by the European encounter. For example, Six Deer meets La Llorona, a manifestation of Cortez's mistress, Malinche, who describes the effect of the conquest on her people. As Six Deer travels through time and space she learns and simultaneously reveals to us our historical identity and how for our people, survival has meant learning to live within a multicultural heritage and ambiance.
From the West: Shooting the Tourist attempts to redirect documentary photography from the "objective" vision of modernity by documenting the search for the "West" by way of the tourist attraction. The notion is to return the documentary gaze. This work was commissioned by the Mexican Museum for the traveling exhibition From the West and consists of 7 artist books constructed into accordion fold postcards and one photomural. The mural depicts a tourist line waiting for a ride on Thunder Mountain at Frontier Land in Disneyland. The series of post cards documents various tourist activities such as staging, going native, collecting, and looking.
During the summer of 1996 I assembled an installation in a bathroom of a room at the Hotel Santa Fe in New Mexico. The intent was to tie the Chicano Myth of Llorona/ the Weeping Woman with the contemporary news story of young women that denied their pregnancy. Like the story of Llorona these women are ostracized for killing their offspring. The room is converted into Llorona’s room complete with her trappings like water and a grapevine with exposed roots to resembling wire like hair. A Cherub floats around the room. A shower curtain is screen printed with a line of young female faces expressing shock. Tossed onto the bathroom floor are green hi-heels and for reading entertainment are the tabloids about the heinous newborn killings. Gratified on the wall is the installation’s title, For a Good Time Call 1-900-Llorona. I believe everyone pays on this issue. In collaboration with Asta Kuusinen, with the same intent of For a Good Time Call 1-900-Llorona, Las Lloronas installation was installed in various locations throughout Albuquerque.
A recent work, La Guadalupana, is a 15.5-foot photomural that was installed at the Musee Puech Denys at Rodez, France. I was invited to create an installation that would source the Guadalupe. Since a 17c-easel painting resided in the town’s cathedral, they were familiar with the icon as a religious relic. I wanted to present them the Chicano vernacular concerning the Virgin. The mural depicts a "Pinta" (inmate) standing in front of metal bars, he is wearing handcuffs, and a tattooed of the Guadalupe is on his back. Shot with an 8x10 camera, the negative holds amazing detail and blown up to 15.5 feet the pores on the back and the hairs on the arms are quite visible. It resonates as a massive projection. The intention was to return an image of colonialism’s dark side to Europe. Ultimately the piece resonated the sacred and profane. Once again Saints and Sinners theme emerged. The installation resides in the collection of the New Mexico Fine Art Museum.
At present, my conceptions are rendered though printing processes like photographic lithographs, serigraphs, collotypes or chemical/digital photographic prints. My formal interest is to incorporate computer and graphic skills with photo processes that together form a photographic printing technique. This composite skill, a result of experimentation with printmaking, computer technology and photography, allows for the interjection of my conceptual expression to the photo image.