From the days in which the northern part of Mexico became the property of the United States, to the time of the pachucos and braziers jumping from the bush, the Chicano culture has defended its existence from all possible and imaginable fronts, being that of the art a noble and generous terrain but also powerful and accurate to raise a fist of war that dictates: “hey, homies, this is our land too, ese”.
Reappropriation of the blackest-hearted soul, bursts of mambo, elegant but laid-back clothes, Spanglish, reimagining the return to Aztlán and a pictorial, photographic and sculptural diaspora that has expanded through the border cities of the United States, speaking to it ever louder not just second or third generation Mexican Americans.
Today, Chicano contemporary art has also welcomed other Latin American conceptions, other exclusively English-speaking mirrors and, in turn, has also dislocated conceptual art, performance, fairs and the most relevant markets in the world, shedding in the process of some clichés, exotic and stagnant readings, without ceasing to be a highly racial, identitarian and politicized art.
Patriotism in Conflict: Fighting for Country and Community exhibition, commemorating 51 years of the National Chicano Moratorium in East Los Angeles, June 2022. (Image: Brittany Murray/MediaNews Group/Long Beach Press-Telegram via Getty Images)
The color of Cesar Chavez
Throughout little more than five decades, Chicano art has expanded the iconography of flannel shirts, prison references, Tin Tán, the pocho slang and its ubiquity that traditionally girded it as a work, almost always painting or sculpture in the best case scenario, created by Americans of Mexican descent and heavily influenced by the Chicano Movement in the United States as part of the countercultural revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s, where protests over the Vietnam War and the struggle for civil rights led by César Chávez took a first sociopolitical and cultural step.
A major turning point occurred in 1990, with the opening of the traveling exhibition Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation at the Wight Gallery at the University of California, Los Angeles, where the exhibition's advisory committee issued the following words, that they were recognition and existence for the community: “Chicano art is the modern and continuing expression of the long-term cultural, economic, and political struggle of the Mexican people within the United States.
It is an affirmation of the complex identity and vitality of its people.
Chicano art emerges from and is shaped by our experiences in the Americas.”
Eagles, Aztec warriors, vatos and rucas in rasquache plan (poor or who manages), like the great artists of the world have "borrowed" from other artistic movements or postmodern theories to gain ground.
Thus, today the dynamic and vibrant figure of Chicano art ranges from the plastic power of fundamental artists such as Carlos Almaraz, Yreina Cervantez, Shizu Saldamando or Linda Vallejo, passing through the emerging generation that is positioning the concerns of the Chicano community on another level: John Valadez (photographer), Bárbara Carrazco (painting) or Harry Gamboa (conceptual), until reaching the transgressive radicalism of
performance
in names like La Pocha Nostra, the decolonial queer gaze of Rafael Esparza, and even the expansion of the Chicanco as proposed in the work of the Salvadoran artist based in Los Angeles, Beatriz Cortez, who commands a kind of cross-border conceptual sci-fi multiple gaze.
Aliendigenism, a project conceived in three years by Guillermo Estrada while he was studying at the University of California in San Diego to obtain his Master of Fine Arts degree.
Alienism
Just like the case of Beatriz Cortez, a paradigmatic example of the undeniable imprint of Chicano art even outside its own borders is found today in the work of artists like Guillermo Estrada, 43, who from a very young age has seen influenced by the cross-border relationship, generating a whole discursive and aesthetic language based on the multiple identity, derived from the Mexico-United States relationship.
“I am from Tecate, Baja California, which is between Ensenada, Tijuana and the international line with Baja California and between smaller towns such as El Cajón and also a part of San Diego.
I have had a lot of relationship and development of my work here, because my family also lives in this area and came to the United States very often to visit them.
When I was studying for a degree in history, I came to work with my tourist visa until 2013. At the same time, I produce things related to the Mexicali music scene with the artist Christian Franco.
“My thesis and much of my work has to do with this relationship between countries, the idea of border, which is 'everywhere' and is in everything.
One way of looking at it is when I experience 2013 – the year in which I regularize my legal situation in the United States – and they assign me an 'Alien' number, they give me a resident registration and I'm stuck with that.
In addition, my grandfather grew up in an indigenous community and that was decanting in this concept of the foreign alien and native indigenous.
So I see the border from another perspective, I put
alienism in
it : a person who migrates to another side, can be from a neighborhood or from home, and undoes the idea of a border.
Like limits, regions, cosmos and the
underground
.
I can talk with Rancho Shampoo (performance and musical project), which gives me another perspective and dimension, that has helped me a lot to work in the United States.
Now I return to Mexico and I am a hybrid-axis with this country.
Having these two possibilities to travel has helped me a lot to understand the environment of how I live it through my
hommies
, my family, my work, the intersections and the people;
It is all an exercise in reflection around where you live and where you are.
There are barriers, limits, regions where you move easily and others against the light.
This is also so that the dialogue grows more, it is a different perspective of my border but it can be combined well with other border people (such as Chicanos) It is connected, ”says Estrada.