Chicano/a Art Legacies
Monday, June 3 ||||| 5:00 - 6:00 pm (Eastern)
Click to join: https://zoom.us/j/95909160166
ABOUT |||||
Join us on Zoom for a virtual discussion with 2nd Story exhibiting artist Israel Campos, in conversation with a distinguished slate of panelists, including Dr. Martina Ayala, Professor Emeritus Jim Escalante, and Dr. Jennifer Gonzales.
This discussion will center around the historical legacies and present-day cultural concerns embedded within Israel Campos’ work. Specifically, the program will dive into the ways in which the artist merges ancient Mesoamerican glyphs and contemporary Chicano/a body styling; his thoughts about representation, particularly in regards to gender and queerness; how spatial contexts determine his material choices and narrative strategies; and the disproportional impact of climate change on Latinx communities, among other topics.
PANELIST BIOS |||||
Dr.Martina Ayala is currently the Executive Director for the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts. She is a curator, educator, filmmaker, and visionary leader. For over 35 years, she has curated art exhibits, produced concerts and cultural events, and led innovative programs, schools, and organizations serving inter-generational multicultural communities.
As a scholar and activist with a Doctorate in International and Multicultural Education from the University of San Francisco, her life’s work has focused on Chicano cinema, community, literacy, and spirituality. She is currently committed to preserving, developing, and promoting Latin American and Chicano(a) art history, specifically protecting the print poster archives created by Latinx artists at Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts (MCCLA) over the past 46 years. As a transformative leader and coach, she supports folks seeking to understand their purpose and truth.
Israel Campos is an interdisciplinary, queer, L.A.-based artist that works with paintings, print media, digital media, and artist books. His work embraces the art tradition from Mesoamerica to explore how historical events are interconnected and reverberate into the present.
Israel graduated with a bachelors from the University of California Santa Cruz in 2011 and acquired an MFA from the University of Wisconsin‐Madison in 2015. His work is in the permanent collections of the Kohler Art Library, the UCSC Digital Art Research Center, the Zuckerman Museum of Art, and the Oregon College of Art and Craft. He has exhibited in venues across the country, including the ArtHelix Gallery in New York City, the Ronna and Eric Hoffman Gallery of Contemporary Art in Portland and is an active member of the Vox Pop printmaking artist collective and the California Society of Printmakers. He also runs and operates Chayote Press.
Jim Escalante is an artist and professor emeritus from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he taught graphic design, artists books and photography for 30 years. In addition to teaching, he served as Department Chair of the Department of Art, as well as the Director of Chicano/a Studies in the early 1990s and finally as an Associate Dean for Faculty.
He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Photography from North Texas State University and a Master of Fine Arts with a focus in Typography and Photography from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. He established Iguana Press, a fine press, in 1978 which is dedicated to making books that combine letterpress printing with hand papermaking and traditional book binding. The ability to collaborate with artists and writers has been central to his creative work in design, book printing and photography.
Dr. Jennifer A. González is Professor of History of Art and Visual Culture at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a faculty member in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, New York. Her research engages theoretical discourses of feminism, diaspora, and decoloniality in contemporary art.
She has articles in numerous scholarly journals such as, Camera Obscura, Art Journal, and Aztlán and has published several books, including, Subject to Display: Reframing Race in Contemporary Installation Art and Chicano and Chicana Art: A Critical Anthology which was included in the top art books of the decade in 2020 by ArtNews magazine.