chicano art perspective
san antonio gives latinx artists lots of exposure. mo and i checked out the san antonio museum of art and the centro des artes — three artists in particular caught my fancy.
Jose-Luis Rivera-Barrera (no website i could find) cut “enamoramiento” from one log of mesquite. the lines flow naturally through the wood, incredibly sensual. arcing of the figures gives it more heft and created it’s own little world within the room.
Joshua Perez photographs his San Antonio neighborhood in all its glory and grime. emotional connections to his subjects and empathy for them so apparent. the hands on the old woman, the man allowing his grandkids to plaster stickers all over himself, and the care in printing that you can see from his contact sheets and notes.
and then Delilah Montoya, one of the few women who’s work we saw today (also: a few photos by Ilse Bing —wow! — from the early to mid 20th century; the closest of the dorothea lange migrant mother prints; and mo saw her first ansel adams in person! ). ingenious pieces. montoya harks back to casta colonial portraits, which were
“used to illustrate the inter-racial mixing among europeans, indigenous people, and africans. they typically depicted a family unit — a couple and one or two offspring — in a domestic setting. each family member was labeled according to an intricate, racial taxonomy. these categories had social and legal implications.”
so under her photographs of these families, she etched the ancestral migration of the mother’s and father’s families while also representing their racial dna in test tubes holding differently colored sand. powerful.
so cool that i can have such a great adventure with my daughter. i love spending time with her.