We are here at the Arizona State University Hispanic Research Center in Tempe, Arizona, looking at a set of lithographs by Chicana and Chicano artists that speak to the theme of “La Chicana” and the roots of contemporary Chicana feminism. These lithographs are only a small sampling of the large Chicana/o art collection we have here at the Center.
We are here at the Hispanic Research Center at Arizona State University looking at a set of lithographs that offers us diverse Chicana and Chicano interpretations of spirituality, faith, and mortality as well as their roles in Mexican American culture. In some of these pieces, we see how the artists evoke otherworldly themes by recalling their deceased relatives through the visual recreation of an altar or ofrenda. In others, we see traditional imagery akin to Catholic colonial paintings. And then there are images like calaveras and angels that evoke questions of the afterlife.
We are here at the Hispanic Research Center at Arizona State University looking at a unique set of lithographs by Chicano artists. Each of these four pieces playful approaches the complexities of Mexican American and Chicana/o identity, culture, and politics.
We are here at the Hispanic Research Center looking at a set of eleven lithographs by Chicana and Chicano artists. Each piece was commissioned by the center in the 1990s and early 2000s in an effort to promote and celebrate the fine art of Mexican American artists in Arizona and around the country. This video focuses attention on the method each of these artists used to make these artworks: a printmaking process known as lithography.
In the mid-1990s, the HRC Director Gary Francisco Keller started the HRC’s art collection and began documenting the work of local and nationally Hispanic artists, primarily Chicana and Chicano. In this series, our inaugural virtual tour, you will have the opportunity to see images of the lithographs commissioned by the HRC, and more importantly learn about the artists who created these splendid works, and how their culture and experience have influenced their lives in the creation of their artworks. One of our goals has been to help the works to be understood, not as folk art or craft, but as a school of American fine art.