When you think of historic art on the walls in museums, you probably think of art that is, well, old. But, the newest exhibit at the Arizona State University Art Museum made up of art from the 1980s and '90s.
Their new exhibition features a collection of Chicano prints and graphics from this time period that will be displayed in two parts throughout the year-long exhibition. Part 2 will feature the 2000s to about 2010.
Every piece in the exhibition is a print — made with a block or a screen to easily disseminate imagery. They’re common in cultural social movements, like the one at hand: The Chicano Rights Movement.
The project is the result of a collaboration with ASU’s Hispanic Research Center. Brittany Corrales, curator at the ASU Art Museum and co-curator of their new collection, joined The Show to talk about how she feels it was a winning collaboration from the start.
Full conversation
BRITTANY CORRALES: They gave us full access of their collection of about 1,000 works of art and we were able to just comb through this really dynamic collection that is historic, that is modern, that is contemporary and really start to build a narrative through stories that are told by these artists.
LAUREN GILGER: That's quite an undertaking, right? Like you have 1,000 pieces of art that go back however long and then how do you shape it into something becomes, you know, something that is coalesced?
CORRALES: Yeah, it was rather difficult in this case because we really connected with a lot of the artworks, my co-curator and I, Alana Hernandez, we spent a lot of time sort of physically combing through their collection. We actually had gloves or when we're, you know, going page by page looking at these prints and graphics and, you know, ultimately, we had to distill it to a handful of artworks that we felt most signified, personified certain movements and themes.
GILGER: It, it is sort of roughly about the Chicano Rights Movement. We're looking at relatively recent art in, in art history here. This is the ‘80s and ‘90s, right?
CORRALES: Yes, it's funny, we now refer to the ‘80s and ‘90s as historic, which to me is very much, you know, that was my childhood. So, you know, some of the imagery really connected with me from this period of the ‘90s, from, you know, the particular color palettes that were used to the language and iconography. But it is, it is historic now.
GILGER: I love that I feel the same way. And I'm looking around at just the, you know, the broad picture here of what's included from all of those, you know, 1,000 pieces you chose from. And it, it, it feels very ‘90s to me, very ‘80s, because it feels like my childhood. Do you have a couple of pieces that exemplify this for you?
CORRALES: Sure. I'd love to walk you through some of the, the pieces in the exhibition. So, this one here is by Yolanda Lopez. It's called “Who's the Illegal and Alien Pilgrim.” And it, it's in black and white. You can see it's really graphically rendered. You can see that it's an image of an Indigenous warrior who is pointing directly at the viewer. And it's modeled off of the Uncle Sam poster.
GILGER: The “I want you.” Yeah, I can see that totally.
CORRALES: And this was done directly in response to President [Jimmy] Carter's 1978 immigration plan, which was really severe and overarching and really curtailed a lot of rights for immigrants. And the artist is really putting this question back to the viewer, of who is allowed to make this determination of who is Indigenous to a certain place.
GILGER: It's really interesting. So something like this, no color here, but very emblematic of a couple of different times and places in American history that kind of speak a lot to us. Talk about this one. It looks like a picture of a mural like on a wall right? Like of graffiti almost.
CORRALES: Yes. Well, this is actually a print that's based off of a painting. So, yes. So this is by Salvador Roberto Torres. You can see there is text as well as graphics. So it says “Viva La Raza” and he is recreating his original painting in the form of a print. And what you see in the center here is an image of the eagle from the symbol of the United Farm Workers Movement.
GILGER: And speaking of that, the next piece here is of course of Cesar Chavez.
CORRALES: Yes, absolutely. So this piece is also a print. It's a serigraph or also known as a screen print by Esther Hernandez. And this is her homage to Cesar Chavez. It was done in 1993, the year that Cesar Chavez died. Famously, Chavez was a fighter for immigrant rights, particularly Chicano rights in the United Farm Workers Movement. And she's rendered this image in the likeness of a postage stamp.
So you see it's in red, white and blue, you know the colors of the United States, just pointing to the fact that he was an iconic figure in the United States. And this was done 10 years before the U.S. Postal Service released an official version of this stamp.
GILGER: Is this Frida Kahlo sort of in an incredibly complicated way?
CORRALES: Yes, this is an artist named Alfredo Arreguín, who is portraying Frida Kahlo. So you know Frida Kahlo, we see her image everywhere today, right? You know, she's very recognizable as a figure. But she really wasn't until the 1970s, when Chicano artists started portraying her likeness in their artworks.
So here's an example of an artist in the ‘90s who is portraying Frida Kahlo in this really vibrant pink, black and cyan blue composition and color palette surrounded by flora and fauna. This is called “Frida's Messengers,” and just really sort of deifying her in this way.
GILGER: Talk a little bit about because, you know, some of these are figures we recognize, right? Like we have Uncle Sam iconography, we have religious iconography. There's Frida Kahlo, there's Cesar Chavez. Like talk about what was happening in the Chicano rights movement in the ‘80s and ‘90s that, that brought forth these figures and sort of, yeah, like, like made them saintly in a way.
CORRALES: That's a great question. That's one of the reasons why we decided to present this exhibition chronologically because we wanted to emphasize the fact that in the ‘80s and ‘90s, there was sort of a resurgence of the political ideals and figures from the original Chicano Rights Movement in the ‘60s and ‘70s. So, these artists were sort of looking to the past, looking to history, looking to the politics of that movement and really popularizing them in art of the ‘80s and ‘90s.
GILGER: This is like a look back at a look back almost.
CORRALES: It is exactly that.
GILGER: So we have to talk about this last piece before we're done here because this is the cover art of the whole exhibition. And I recognize it here. It's of like a kitchen in, you know, somebody's house. The Virgin of Guadalupe is pictured on the wall. There's a taco and salsa on the table. Tell us about this.
CORRALES: This is a screen print by Larry Yáñez. It's called “Cocina Jaiteca.” It's from 1998 and we connected really immediately with this artwork as we're selecting work for the exhibition because it's really portraying a very familiar scene of a home kitchen. And, you know, in the ‘90s, there … was really sort of this underdog aesthetic of the Chicano movement really doing what you can with what you have, but it was also exclusionary of queer and feminist and women's perspectives.
So, another term was coined by Amalia Mesa Bains that was called domesticana or domesticanx. Looking at the domestic fear, looking at the feminine space, the, the everyday life and lived experience.
So, looking at this scene, it is a very familiar scene of a kitchen. You see a table setting with a salt shaker, a pepper shaker, some tacos on a plate on the center there and this sort of old-fashioned kitchen, the Virgin of Guadalupe, a calendar with references to Aztec gods. And like you said, the really vibrant nature of this beautiful domestic scene.
GILGER: So I wanna ask you lastly because this sounds like an exhaustive process putting this together. Have you heard from students walking through this or listened? You must love doing that, right? Like sitting in the gallery while people go through it and hear what they say to each other. I mean, I wonder like what the ‘80s and ‘90s look like, you know, to students today.
CORRALES: Yeah, it is funny. That's one of my favorite things to do actually is to just take a break and, and stroll through the galleries and listen to those conversations. But certainly the students coming through are in 18, 19, 20 years old and this is historic to them, you know, and it's almost,, like, vintage is cool again, right. The ‘90s are back.
GILGER: That is true.
CORRALES: So, yes, I've certainly seen a lot of photography, a lot of these prints end up on Instagram and we love to see it. We love to see it shared.
