Search results for ""UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press""

At his untimely death in 1998, photographer Ricardo Valverde (b. 1946) had for almost three decades documented the various communities and social spaces of Los Angeles. Though he began this lifelong pursuit while still in college, capturing the streets of his South Central neighborhood and the urban landscape of downtown Los Angeles, it wasn’t until the Watts Riots of 1965 that Valverde and his work became deeply political. But if his work became more political, it did so within an aesthetic that grew ever more critical of the tropes and institutions of documentary art.Featuring more than one hundred illustrations, this book—in the landmark A Ver: Revisioning Art History series—records the unfolding of Valverde’s vision, from his first photographs of L.A. streets as repositories of the city’s social history, to his socially and politically acute portraiture, to his surrealist-inflected mixed-media work late in his career, to his role in the formation of the community-based arts groups Self-Help Graphics & Art, Ojos, and Chicano Art Collectors Anonymous. Ramón García’s essay offers a clear framework for understanding Valverde’s art and life, along with a sense of the personal and social politics and history that influenced both so thoroughly.

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In the 1920s and 1930s a uniquely Mexican American entertainment culture flourished across the southwestern United States. Spanish-language newspapers offered theater listings, coverage of favorite performers, cultural criticism, and serialized novels that thematized entertainment culture. Gabriel Navarro was a key figure in this milieu. "There Are No Hispanic Stars!" assembles the novellas and articles that represent his extensive body of film and cultural criticism. Covering a range of topics from the lives of Hollywood's well-known Mexican actors to the plight of Mexican extras and the formation of amateur film clubs, Navarro allowed his readers to participate in the construction of a Latina/o Hollywood. At the same time, he urged Hollywood not to overlook its Latina/o audiences. Together, these writings present a lively look at the film culture that emerged in the Southwest's Mexican immigrant community. The introduction situates Navarro's writing within the context of Mexican-oriented journalism and cultural politics of the era.

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Home — signaling a dwelling, residence or place of origin — embodies one of the most basic concepts for understanding an individual or group within a larger physical and social environment. Yet home has been a little noted, although prevalent, feature in art since the 1950s, a period in which artists challenged the traditional “object” of the visual arts through the use of material and media culture, new forms, and performative actions and processes. This volume explores works by diverse U.S. Latino and Latin American artists whose engagement with the concept of “home” provides the basis for an alternative narrative of post-war art. Their work brings together an impressive array of formal languages, conceptual strategies, and art historical references with the varied social concerns characterizing both the postwar period in the Americas and an emerging global economy impacting day-to-day life. The artists featured in this volume engage home as both concept and artifact. This can be seen in the use of building fragments or excisions (Gordon Matta-Clark, Gabriel de la Mora, and Leyla Cárdenas), household furniture (Raphael Montañez Ortiz, Beatriz González, Doris Salcedo, Amalia Mesa-Bains, Guillermo Kuitca), and personal possessions (Carmen Argote, María Teresa Hincapié, Camilo Ontiveros), and also in the use of coca leaves as a material base of the American Dream and its economic exchange with Colombia (Miguel Angel Rojas). Within more representational work, home is the re-creation of fraught domiciles (Abraham Cruzvillegas, Pepón Osorio, Daniel J. Martinez), a collage of spaces, styles, and materials (Antonio Berni, Andrés Asturias, Jorge Pedro Nuñez, Miguel Angel Ríos, Juan Sanchez), and a juxtaposition of bodies and place (Laura Aguilar, Myrna Báez, Johanna Calle, Perla de León, Ramiro Gomez, Jessica Kairé, Vincent Valdez). In more conceptual work, home is all these things reduced to form—a floor plan (Luis Camnitzer, León Ferrari, María Elena González, Guillermo Kuitca), a catalog of objects (Antonio Martorell, Hincapié), or a housing development plan (Livia Corona Benjamin, Martinez). In the end, home is a journey without arrival (Allora y Calzadilla, Luis Cruz Azaceta, Christina Fernandez, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Julio César Morales, Teresa Serrano). Home—So Different, So Appealing reveals the departures and confluences that continue to shape US Latino and Latin American art and expands our appreciation of these artists and their work.

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This anthology explores the relationships between Chicana/o students, families, and communities and the various school settings that comprise the education pipeline, from Kindergarten classrooms through postsecondary programs and postgraduate experiences. The essays, which appeared in Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies between 1970 and 2015, present a historical overview that spans the 1880s to the present. It brings together the work of scholars who have elucidated Chicana/o education, and the resulting collection simultaneously historicizes current education research and bolsters our understanding of Chicanas/os’ multifaceted relationship to schooling in the United States. Among the topics considered are bilingual education and cultural relevance, teacher expectations and student achievement, racism and sexism in postsecondary education, the Chicano movement and the high school walkouts, anti–ethnic studies legislation, school finance and governance, and Jotería identity. Together, the essays reveal how educational institutions have operated in contradictory ways for Chicana/o students: they have depressed and marginalized as well as emancipated and empowered them. The Chicana/o Education Pipeline presents the story of the struggle and perseverance of Chicana/o students, families, and communities as they have fought for a more equitable education.

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La Raza, launched in 1967 in the basement of an Eastside LA church, was conceived as a tool for community-based organizing during the early days of the Chicano movement. The all-volunteer staff of the newspaper—and the magazine that followed—informed readers and exhorted them to action through images and articles that showcased protests and demonstrations and documented pervasive social inequity and police abuse. La Raza’s photographers played a critical role as artists, journalists, and activists, creating an unparalleled record of the determination, resilience, and achievements of the Chicano community during a period of profound social change. This catalog presents photographs from the La Raza exhibition at the Autry Museum of the American West and the more than 25,000 images in the La Raza Photograph Collection at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. The essays offer not only scholarly assessments of the role of Chicanx photographers in social movements and art history but also personal perspectives from La Raza photographers.

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Established in 1992 by Los Angeles's Center Theatre Group, the Latino Theatre Initiative sought to diversify audiences by diversifying theatrical programming. Until 2005, when it was suspended, the program resulted in the production of eleven new main-stage plays at the Mark Taper Forum. It was also key in the development of new and emerging Latino artists, the production of second-stage works, and the incorporation of community-based events into theater programming. Chantal Rodriguez draws on the extensive Latino Theatre Initiative/Center Theatre Group Papers, 1980-2005, housed at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, in this first extended historical account of the program. Rodriguez evaluates the initiative's successes and shortcomings and examines the roles played by its leaders and its significant roster of artists. A finding aid for the collection and a selected bibliography round out the volume.

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Pepón Osorio is an internationally recognized artist whose richly detailed installations challenge the stereotypes and misconceptions that shape our view of social institutions and human relationships. Osorio’s colorful, often riotous installations are constructed from found objects and things that he customizes or creates. With a wry sense of humor, he probes sober topics, including prison life, domestic violence, AIDS, and poverty.Osorio’s collaborative site-based works develop from his immersion into a community—residents of urban ethnic neighborhoods, employees who provide social services, children in foster care—and the discussions that result. As he addresses difficult themes such as race and gender, death and survival, and alienation and belonging, Osorio asks his audience to reconsider their assumptions and biases. In this book, Jennifer A. González shows that although Osorio draws on his Puerto Rican background and the immigrant experience for inspiration, his artistic statements bridge geographical barriers and class divides. Osorio’s installations have been exhibited internationally, and his work is represented at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico in San Juan, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and other major museums. He has received numerous awards, including a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1999.

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Christina Fernandez sees herself as equally artist and storyteller, one who employs photography to explore social and physical isolation and estrangement within marginalized communities while experimenting with composition and form. Her art is shaped by the concerns that powered the Chicano movement and the aesthetics and discourses of postmodernism. As she considers the questions and ideas that absorb her, Fernandez moves between landscape and portraiture, but she revises the visual language to suit her purpose, producing works that are deeply thoughtful and engaging. This exhibition catalog examines the Los Angeles–based photographer’s work since the late 1980s. Among these works are María’s Great Expedition, in which the artist photographs herself as her immigrant grandmother, and the Lavanderia series, photographs created from layered images that offer glimpses into Eastside LA laundromats and the lives of their customers. The volume’s six essays are supplemented with excerpts from three interviews with the artist. Together, they offer critical perspectives on Fernandez’s radical intellectual and formal agenda and reveal the multiple senses of “exposure” that are at play in her art. Christina Fernandez: Multiple Exposures opens in September 2022 at the California Museum of Photography at the University of California, Riverside, and will travel nationally.

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Robert Hernandez traces the history and assesses the impact of VIVA! Lesbian and Gay Latino Artists, a nonprofit artists' coalition founded in 1987 in the Silverlake community of Los Angeles. Their aim was to increase the representation of lesbian Latina and gay Latino artists in the LA art scene. VIVA! sponsored exhibitions, theatrical performances, and educational outreach. It worked closely with other gay and lesbian organizations in Los Angeles, using arts-based projects to address cultural and sociopolitcal issues that were of concern to their community and the AIDS crisis in particuar. The first organization of its kind in Los Angeles, VIVA! offered a stage and a voice for artists who had been routinely marginalized. The VIVA! collection of papers is housed at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. It includes administrative papers, photographs, artwork, VIVA! publications, and documents related to the organization's exhibitions, performances, educational projects, and other events.

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A generously illustrated account of the life and work of the prominent Chicano artist, educator, and activist José Montoya (1932–2013) was a leading figure in bilingual and bicultural expression drawn from barrio life as a defining feature of U.S. culture. As an artist, poet, and musician, he produced iconic works depicting pachuco and pachuca culture based on his own experiences as a youth after World War II. These include the poem “El Louie” as well as thousands of political posters and masterful sketches. Montoya cofounded the art collective Royal Chicano Air Force and helped organize for the United Farm Workers. An influential educator, he established the Barrio Art Program in the early 1970s, and taught at California State University, Sacramento.Author Ella Maria Diaz examines a remarkable career that traversed decades, languages, media, and genres. This book is illustrated with reproductions of Montoya’s art from rarely seen archival slides and documents, as well as from private collections and the Montoya estate. Through oral histories and archival research, Diaz proposes a new model for the study of Latina/o/x artists who reject the boundaries between visual art, poetry, music, education, and community activism.This book is distributed for the Chicano Studies Research Center at UCLA.

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A generously illustrated account of the life and work of the prominent Chicano artist, educator, and activist José Montoya (1932–2013) was a leading figure in bilingual and bicultural expression drawn from barrio life as a defining feature of U.S. culture. As an artist, poet, and musician, he produced iconic works depicting pachuco and pachuca culture based on his own experiences as a youth after World War II. These include the poem “El Louie” as well as thousands of political posters and masterful sketches. Montoya cofounded the art collective Royal Chicano Air Force and helped organize for the United Farm Workers. An influential educator, he established the Barrio Art Program in the early 1970s, and taught at California State University, Sacramento.Author Ella Maria Diaz examines a remarkable career that traversed decades, languages, media, and genres. This book is illustrated with reproductions of Montoya’s art from rarely seen archival slides and documents, as well as from private collections and the Montoya estate. Through oral histories and archival research, Diaz proposes a new model for the study of Latina/o/x artists who reject the boundaries between visual art, poetry, music, education, and community activism.This book is distributed for the Chicano Studies Research Center at UCLA.

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Speculative fiction—encompassing both science fiction and fantasy—has emerged as a dynamic field within Chicana/o and Latina/o studies, producing new critical vocabularies and approaches to topics that include colonialism and modernity, immigration and globalization, race and gender. As the first collection engaging Chicana/o and Latina/o speculative cultural production, Altermundos: Latin@ Speculative Literature, Film, and Popular Culture provides a comprehensive alternative to the view of speculative fiction as a largely white, male, Eurocentric, and heteronormative genre. It features original essays from more than twenty-five scholars as well as interviews, manifestos, short fiction, and new works from Chicana/o and Latina/o artists.

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Behind the fascinating public artist’s practice of collaboration Judith F. Baca is best known for the Great Wall of Los Angeles (1976–83), a vibrant 2,740-foot mural in Los Angeles that presents an alternative history of California—one that focuses on the contributions of marginalized and underrepresented communities. The mural is emblematic of Baca’s pioneering approach to creating public art, a process in which members of the community are essential contributors to the conception and realization of the work.Anna Indych-López explores Baca’s oeuvre, from early murals painted with local gang members in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles to more recently commissioned works. She looks in depth at the Great Wall and considers the artist’s ongoing work with the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) in Venice, California, a nonprofit group founded by Baca in 1976. Throughout, Indych-López assesses what she calls Baca’s “public art of contestation” and discusses how ideas of collaboration and authorship and issues of race, class, and gender have influenced and sustained Baca’s art practice.

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This first survey of Antonio Bernal’s life and work, The Artist as Eyewitness features essays that assess his murals, situating them within the historical, political, and cultural frameworks of the Chicano movement. It also includes an analysis of Bernal’s unpublished novel, Breaking the Silence; a biography of Bernal; reproductions of his artwork; and a selection of his writings. Drawing on personal correspondence and writings, photographs, and audiovisual materials that document Bernal’s travels, artwork, and family history, this book offers an important contribution to Chicana/o studies and art history.

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This collection of essays, drawn from Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, focuses on the personal experiences of Chicanx and Latinx scholars, writers, and artists. Each essay is a reflection on the process of self-naming—the role of “I”—in the authors’ work and research. Autobiography without Apology expands the earlier CSRC Press publication I Am Aztlán with the inclusion of ten essays that bring the collection up to date. The new title acknowledges Aztlán’s growing scope as it embraces Latinx, LGBT, and Indigenous studies as well as Chicanx studies.

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Behind the fascinating public artist’s practice of collaboration Judith F. Baca is best known for the Great Wall of Los Angeles (1976–83), a vibrant 2,740-foot mural in Los Angeles that presents an alternative history of California—one that focuses on the contributions of marginalized and underrepresented communities. The mural is emblematic of Baca’s pioneering approach to creating public art, a process in which members of the community are essential contributors to the conception and realization of the work.Anna Indych-López explores Baca’s oeuvre, from early murals painted with local gang members in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles to more recently commissioned works. She looks in depth at the Great Wall and considers the artist’s ongoing work with the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) in Venice, California, a nonprofit group founded by Baca in 1976. Throughout, Indych-López assesses what she calls Baca’s “public art of contestation” and discusses how ideas of collaboration and authorship and issues of race, class, and gender have influenced and sustained Baca’s art practice.

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