Lecture 008

Amalia Mesa-Bains

Amalia Mesa-Bains

• Chicana: American Mexican (anti-assimilation)

• Education

  • Master/Doctor: Education
  • Doctor: Clinical Psychology

• Work: education

• mestizas (mestizo): women of mixed blood (Spanish or indigenous)

• explore

  • tradition vs. innovation
  • cyclic vs linear time

• women identity formation: in cabinet, harem, library, garden... (preservation, knowledge contemplation)

Altar Installation

"Altar for Santa Teresa de Avila"

• Saint Teresa of Avila (Saint Teresa of Jesus), a saint of Catholic Church.

  • known for healing and founding convents (修女院)
  • beatification: declaration by the Pope that a dead person is in a state of bliss (first step toward canonization and permitting public veneration)

• ofrendas: offerings for dead people in Díade Muertos (亡灵节).

  • firstly: image
  • secondly: usually what dead people like, bread, wine
  • lastly: candle, container, mirror, shampoo, towel... so that the dead can be refreshed when come into altar
  • calaveras (bone candy), cempazuchitl (flower) all over the place

Altar and Ofrenda

Chicano: non-Anglo image of Mexican-American

• Chicano Civil Right Movement in California (1970s)

Memorial Practice: (2nd Nov.)

• cemetery vigils (墓地守夜)

• elaborate feast

• build temporary altars

Artist learned the tradition and try to make it innovative

"altar" vs "ofrenda":

• altar:

  • permanent family linearage
  • multi-generational
  • favorate saints

• ofrenda:

  • temporary for festival
  • person-specific
  • kinda a site-specific (temporary) installation art

Sacret may not be fancy. Domestic sacret can be made by cheap stuff, but has high spirituality.

"Ofrenda for Dolores Del Rio (墨西哥女演员)"

• hybrid religious enactment (folk art) and secular installation. Political focused, cultural specific (fine art)

• audience: Chicano (who appriciate cultural heroes and "criticize rigid social mores" (tradition))

• idea: Dolores Del Rio is an important figure in woman Chicano and should be celebrated as part of lineage of Chicano - "woman's time". Making a role models. Shifting from "just a movie star" to woman of significant of Mexican woman breaking racial taboos of mainstream Hollywood (127)

• secular icon of cinema

• "canonization" (封为圣人) of the secular

• mixing both private and public objects in the ofrenda

Home alter

• symbolize

  • expression for female
  • race and culture
  • blend of cultural, historical, racial, religious tradition (p127)

• altered symbolic meaning: women's emancipation icon figure

• agreement: Virgin of Guadalupe (dark-skinned patron saint of Mexico) in home altars

"Grotto of the Virgins" (1987)

• idea: invite comparison between 3 woman, they deserve holy of Catholic icons

• rasquache: In Spanish, rasquache means 'leftover' or 'of no value. ' In Chicano vernacular, it describes an attitude, the taste or lifestyle of the underdog.” (Here: we mean distasteful mixing - like putting soysauce into milk)

  • eclecticism (mix ideas)
  • irreverence (disrespect to tradition)
  • playful

• grotto of family of 3 woman: Frida Kahlo (highlight illness, and Kahlo's work), Dolore Del Rio, grandmother (traditional church style)

• building grotto from the ground blend exhibition space

• rock / earth: linking lives and returning of earth after death

Other Carman Artists Redefine Female Icons as Signs of Liberation rather than Obedience

Carmen Lomas Garza Yolanda López

• "Guadalupe Series": oil portrait of herself, mother, grandmother as incarnations of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
  • idea: turn them into powerful, self-sufficient figure

Ester Hernandez

• "The Virgin of Guadalupe Defending Chicano Rights"

Cesar Chavez: use Guadalupe as "mexicanidad"(墨西哥人性)

Rasquachismo and Domesticana

Linked to a working-class position of marginality or lack, "rasquachismo" suggests clever resourcefulness, flexibility, attentive intuition, and a creative mix and juxtaposition of aesthetic forms.

Think: silver cups and slaves cage, chairs and punishing stance, "hay look, there is a caucasian", and american chinese tourist, superman and businessman craw

femmage: process of stiching together different things. A common practice for "women's traditional domestic art making"

• the term "legitimizes" non-traditional media

I find the definition of this term problematic

Mexicana: cheap tourist art from Mexico

kitsch: (term by Olalquiaga) bad art often made by over-exaggeration or art intent to form criticism

• degree 1: artwork provide immediate, ugly, distasteful feeling (bad taste?)

• degree 2: ugly, but provide a sense of superiority to audience (for social acceptance, class)

• degree 3: ugly, generate new meaning (can be produced by people with good taste)

The "good taste" is deeply embedded in class hierarchy and culture, therefore ill-defined and problematic. (杀马特)

Mesa-Bains consider her artwork between 1st degree and 3rd degree kitsch.

Theory of domesticana: named by Mesa-Bains

• deconstruct stereotype by redefining them

• culture domestic value + emancipation from feminine roles

• the term legitimize the practice of "rasquachismo" of women, making them socially acceptable. (杀马特艺术)

Matter and Metaphor of History

Giving item meaning by making them into altar or cabinet.

• similarity: cabinet of curiosity and altar

• Mesa-Bains's idea: colonialism, collecting, politics of display

German Wunderkammers, Indian studiolos

• maps, codice

• still-life tableau

• glass cabinet, armchair, Persian carpet

• colonizing history

• driven by: rare, beautiful, desire to see (speculari) and desire to know (curiositas) represent "mean of development, raw material of trade, prosperity"

Bann suggest: "curiosity" is a replacement of losing "sacred relics". Or a shift to scientific-version-of-religion.

"Curiositas: The Cabinet (1990)": cabinet

• critique and mourning colonization

• difference: not objects of wonder, rare and magnificent. in historical cabinet of curiosity, Europeans placements of objects misread relationship

• similar: Fred Wilson's slave manacles with silver goblets

• idea: generate meaning history of conquest, violence by placing objects together

Emblems

"Emblems of the Decade: Borders"

• emblems: 徽章

• inscripto: motto (格言)

• pictura (图片) visual depiction of concept

• subscriptio: epigram (警句) that served as commentary on both

• idea: immigrant community, struggles to move from Mexico culture to U.S., stories of hardship

• what: suitcase, letters,

"Emblems of the Decade: Numbers"

• idea: oppressive condition faced by Chicano

• television run video loop (narration)

• epigram about books, statistics, income, AIDs, teen pregnancies, historical events (genocide), list of sc scientific inventors, telescopes, magnifying glass

Walter Benjamin: allegory exists because we don't want it to be forgotten (141) - revivalism

• always borrow and "confiscate" already exist imageries

• some people think: they are "contaminated" by the past

• Owens: explore social historical condition

"Vanitas: Evidence, Ruin, Regeneration"

• vanitas (虚荣心): search for profit, luxury

• things: scientific instruments, historical moments (Teotihuacan pottery, vanitas painting, altar death of Cesar Chavez), painting of "Negro Boy" (as a sign of wealth, boy as object property - Mesa-Bains wasn't allowed to de-contextualize with original version, but can use indigenous artifacts)

• meaning: African diaspora as subject to observation, measure, investigation, scientific practice. Material used as evidence.

QUESTION: What is your opinion? If you were the museum, should "Negro Boy" be kept in its original context or not? Is there a trade-off? Or clearly one decision is better than another?

"The Castle Is Burning"

• swastikas: Nazi symbol.

• vandalism: 对艺术的故意破坏

"Venus Envy I"

• examines idealized feminine roles in private (domestic) environment

• objects: (things that symbolizes psychic effects of female subject. symbolize obedience, virgin, bride, nun, good Catholic woman.) (things that symbolize Mexican American girls) (things that doesn't fall into any roles - girl kickboxer), Aztec relics

• idea: political in conflict with maintaining religious, sexual practice. Control of sexuality produced place (environment, buildings).

• idea: box - institution, objects - subject

• worry: contemporary use of Aztec symbol obscure historical meanings. Chicano artist idealize Toltec, Aztec, Mayan culture to serve political need (no historical accuracy)

"Venus Envy II"

• idea: protected, empowered, confined by "The Garden"(places of Virgin), "The Harem"(pomegranates, woman inhabitant, sexual service, harem: for women social in the past, now for wives), "Sor Juana's Library"(book made, collected, distributed by man - Sor Juana "steal" by disguise as a nun. Study = express as creator, intellectual. It is spiritual because Sor Juana thinks science inspire religion (at odd with Catholic, break role). Mimics "estudiolo" - female intelectural space)

"Venus Envy III"

• idea: imaginary myth and legend (death during childbirth = dead worrier with glory)

• back of gallery: treat artist's life as archeological dig

Conclusion:

• monument

• reviving, revising tradition aesthetic practice -> subject formation

• progressive realism

• past: more urgency than nostalgia, "de-colonial imaginary"

Fabulation: recording down the history

• creative non-fiction: a form to pass story used by marginalized groups that cannot be written down in history

Mesa-bain: use desk as canvas