20th Century
Art Gallery
Politcal Resistance throughout history
La Pola Goes to the Gallows
Colombian
Oil on wooden Panel
1923
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La pola (the Polish woman) was orphaned at a very young age, being adopted into a family of patriots and becoming a prominent member of the Colombian revolution (Adams).She worked as spy for the colombian revolutionaries, posing as a seamsters/dress maker in santa Fe alongside other women involved in the revolution (Adams). Once the Santa Fe spy network was discovered by the Spaniards, people were sent to the gallows to be executed and hung (Adams).The painting is part of a series of illustrations of the revolution: various stories of individual heroism that led to the liberation of Colombia
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How does this work relate to resistance?
Women who took part in the spy network were often overlooked by the opposition because their femininity was mistaken for innocence and vulnerability, thus allowing them to gather information unnoticed. This shows a resistance to gender stereotypes and the true power of women.
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Edita (la del plumero)
Sandra Eleta, Panamanian
black and white photograph
1978-1979
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Sandra Eleta was born in Panamá in 1942 and studied photography in New York in the mid 70’s. She later taught at the Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica.
Her piece, “Edita (la del plumero)” is part of a larger collection titled “La Servidumbre”, or “Servitude”.
“La Servidumbre” as a cohesive collection seeks to “discover the differences between the older and younger generations as they relate to servitude,” (Eleta). This collection includes various portraits of servers, including a butler, maid, and cooks. Each subject in the different portraits conveys a slightly different energy; some, like the butler, “identify” with their roles as servers, finding no line between themselves and their job. Other servers featured in this collection, such as Purita, express a defiance for their job and those they serve. Purita has the “energy of a caged feline” which can be “felt thumping about the enormity of the house.” Some of these servers have been caged within a single home for years, and their identity becomes linked to this single, limited reality.
As of November 2016, Mexican workers are the largest subgroup of the Hispanic workforce population in the USA (14.9 million, or about 62% of all Hispanic workers).
6.4% of all Hispanic women living in the United States work as maids or housekeepers, with this being the most common occupation.
In 2014, Hispanic women had an unemployment rate of 9.6%, the second highest of any ethnic group in the US.
Hispanic women had (and continue to have) some of the lowest wages in the United States, only earning 50.5% of the salary of white men in the year 1980. As of 2013, this number has not grown much and there continues to be a wage gap between Hispanic women and many other demographics. Hispanic women in 2013 only earned 54% of what white men were making, as compared to the 78% salary of white women.
How does this work relate to resistance?
This work relates to resistance in how it studies servitude as an identity but also as a cage which can hold in its residents. The various subjects in “La Servidumbre” express a wide range of experiences regarding servitude, showing some who love their job and fully identify as workers, while others seem to long for escape. However, Edita in particular seems to have some knowledge that we, the viewers, do not. She is not a subservient maid, meant to be neither seen nor heard. Rather, Edita looks upon us with dignity and power.
Portraits, especially portraits of women, tend to view the subject from above to show her as small, dainty, and flattering. Women so often try to diminish themselves in order to appeal to an outside observer, whether that be men or employers. Edita, on the other hand, is not making herself smaller in any way. She lounges- a defiant act in itself, as workers are rarely allowed sufficient rest of down time during their jobs. In her chair she extends an arm loosely away from her body, not bothering to keep it tight to her side in order to take up less space. She sticks out her chin, mimicking the “manly” poses which men frequently make to appear bigger, more formidable, and more confident in themselves.
Finally, Edita brandishes her plumero like a weapon, ready to strike out should anyone challenge her total power. She is regal, kingly. By weaponizing this plumero, an object which is typically associated with subservience and the degradation of Hispanic (especially Mexican) workers, Edita is resisting powers which attempt to hold her back. We may not know what she is planning, but her confident and knowing gaze lets us know that she is in complete control of her own life.
How does this work relate to resistance?
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In an era perpetuating the domination of Europe and the U.S. on the artistic world, Torres García refused to accept the common views of power across the planet. As many Latin American artists attempted throughout time, Torres García took the practices of traditionally powerful societies and reshaped them to grant his own peoples political and cultural strength and significance.
América Invertida
Joaquín Torres García, Uruguay
Ink on paper
1943
After studying in Europe and the United States for nearly 40 years, Joaquín Torres García returned to Uruguay and began spreading his new ideas emphasizing local culture. América Invertida was created the year Torres García returned, 1943. Also after his return, Torres García established the School of the South, which further helped to teach his ideas redistributing power into the Southern Hemisphere. (Jiménez)
Upon returning from his studies, Torres García encouraged students in the School of the South to incorporate local iconography and artistic practices into the styles and movements appearing from places such as Paris and New York. Rather than fully rejecting the experience he gained in his foreign artistic studies, Torres García worked to manipulate them to the advantage of the South. Unlike many other Latin American artists of this time, such as Diego Rivera, Torres García continued work in abstraction and other methods he learned. Furthermore, while he placed focus on local indigenous culture and symbols — such as those seen in América Invertida — Torres García also worked under a general movement which he called Constructive Universalism. This movement drew not only from Latin American symbolism but also concepts such as yin and yang and others from different cultures, showing a connection between ideas he viewed as universal. (De Armendi, Jiménez)
Torres García additionally realized the significance of how depictions on maps influence our understanding of different places. The Mercator map, the most common depiction of the world today, distorts continent sizing and places the equatorial line in a position that makes the Northern Hemisphere appear overall larger and thus more significant. In order to modify conceptualizations of power, Torres García created his own distortion of the world in América Invertida that places complete emphasis on the South by inverting the traditional view of South America. He also determines Montevideo, Uruguay as the location where the equator passes through, placing complete prominence on the South. (De Armendi)
Through his work, Torres García accepted the influence of colonialism and the domination of Europe and the United States on artistic practices while attempting to reframe ideas to provide Latin America with more influence of its own.
How does this work relate to resistance?
Fiesta de la Cruz, Cusco, 1930 is an extremely powerful image, showing a diverse, multi-generational community working together to pull up a large cross that they have decorated. Some people are focused intently on the task and staring up at the cross, with a firm and determined expression, while others are smiling and enjoying the festivity, while others look towards the camera with a clear awareness that they are being photographed. Many of the subjects are dressed in overalls, work shirts, and hats which seems to suggest they are working class, and their feet are pressed firmly onto the soil as they lift the cross. Looming in the hazy background are the expansive mountain ranges of the highland Andes. The figures collectively seem to be asserting: this land is ours, and we cannot be moved.
The story of Fiesta de la Cruz, or the Festival of the Cross, celebrated annually in highland Peru on May 3rd and is the event being photographed by Martin Chambi here, is an empowering feat of Peruvian resistance against Spanish colonization. In this festival, communities from highland Andes gather to decorate a large wooden cross with flowers and fabric, then carry the cross around collectively to neighboring churches. This proceeding is often accompanied by folk music, dance, and performances. This celebration has a deep connection to the pre-colonial Inca festival of local peasants coming together to thank the deities for a rich harvest. However, with Spanish colonization and the introduction of Christianity, such local customs and practices were suppressed and forced to be replaced with the May Crosses Festival from Spain, resulting in the Fiesta de la Cruz pictured here. This Peruvianized version of the Spanish practice, which continues to this day, maintains its connection to its pre-colonial roots, in an amazing instance of resistance against colonization and Western Christianization. Jorge Coronado, a Latin American scholar who has done extensive writing on Chambi’s works, states about Chambi that “In effect, the archive of everyday life that this photographic production provides documents how ordinary Andeans negotiated their selves and their environment as they were swept up in modernization’s massive transformation of the world.”2Fiesta de la Cruz is an embodiment of resistance through negotiation of the environment and the self, by not entirely rejecting Spanish religious practices as a means of survival, but still integrating in the practice pre-colonial ceremonies to prevent complete annihilation of highland Inca practices and ties to their land and home.
Just as important is who is behind the camera– Martin Chambi, a native Quechua photographer born into a poor working class family in a small village in southern Peru called Coaza. Chambi moved to Cusco in 1920 and lived there for the rest of his life, documenting the landscape and daily life and heavily participating in the indigenismo movement, which aimed at reframing and recontextualizing Indian identity and incorporating into the discussion of an American identity. Photography with indigenous subjects at this time was mainly used in the Western world as tools of legitimizing white superiority and racial hierarchy, through the pseudoscience of head and skull measurements, thus objectifying and dehumanizing the non-white subject. In Fiesta de la Cruz, Chambi is reframing Quechua people through Quechua eyes, not as still objects to be studied, measured, and scrutinized, but rather as individuals with active agency, who gaze back at the viewer with determination, and whose voices should be heard. This is a powerful act of resistance on the part of the Peruvian subject as well as the photographer, against the viewer who dares to see them as anything other than human.
On the other hand, I think it is important to discuss the more problematic aspects of Chambi’s practice. I hope this does not come off as a way of dismissing his significant contributions to the construction of a modern Peruvian identity, but rather to point out ways in which these acts of resistance can continue to be a part of a dialogue which questions itself in an effort to move forward. Chambi’s work continues to be controversial amongst some scholars who argue that because Chambi’s goal was to construct and romanticize the “‘authentic Indian’ race,” he still worked under the Western convention of using photography as a way to categorize and divide the “Indian” identity. In anthropologist Deborah Poole’s words, “it was the camera that was to provide the most appropriate technology for this scientific quest to inventory, classify, and survey the native world. That Chambi’s photography of Indians and Indian fiestas was motivated by such a mission is suggested by his own labeling of the photographs as a ‘collection’ of ethnic ‘types’... These photographs were marketed to European and North American tourists.’”5While Fiesta de la Cruz is not one of these photos, I believe keeping this criticism in the back of our minds when viewing the works of Chambi, his contributions to indigenismo, and the indigenismo movement as a whole, is crucial to continue a dialogue.
Fiesta de la Cruz (Festival of the Cross)
Martin Chambi, Quechua Peruvian
Gelatin silver print of film photography
Photographed May 3, 1930, Printed in 2005
Fiesta de la Cruz, Cusco, 1930 captures a large cross being ceremoniously raised as part of an annual celebration observed in the Andean highlands to this day Fiesta de la Cruz, or the Festival of the Cross. The work Fiesta de la Cruz is a part of native Quechua photographer Martin Chambi’s oeuvre, which attempts to capture the raw, layered, complex nature of the daily life of the indigenous working class in Cusco through a native Quechua eye, recontextualizing the often objectified and dehumanized way Indians are viewed in a Western lens, thus defining what it means to be Peruvian, what it means to be Quechua.
Martin Chambi was a native Quechua Peruvian photographer, born in 1891 in a small village of southern Peru called Coaza to a working class family, where he worked for the foreign company Santo Domingo Mining Corporation as a child. He learned of camera and photography techniques from the company photographer, and went on to travel to Arequipa in his teens and study photography under the studio of the photographer Max Vargas. He them moved on to Cusco in 1920 where he spent the rest of his life, documenting the Andean landscape and life while making a living off of commercial photography (mainly portrait photography). After the Cusco Earthquake in 1950, Chambi gradually stopped taking photos and died in 1973, leaving his collection to his daughter Julia.
Throughout his career Chambi went on to become a much celebrated photographer of the Peruvian nation, gaining national acclaim for reflecting and shaping the modern Andean identity, but throughout his life his works were not exhibited outside of Peru. His work was “re-discovered” by American photographer Edward Ranney in 1973, and exhibited along with Ranney’s works in 1979 by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where Chambi’s work entered the popular consciousness of the global modern art world.2However, this “rediscovery” by the European and American art world meant that Chambi’s works would be recontextualized and reframed to fit the purposes of the Western art market. For example, in preparation for the 1979 MOMA exhibition, curators decided not to show Chambi’s own postcard prints of his studio portrait photography, in which Chambi recoloured to image with sepia or blue tones, as they felt it did not fit the modern perception of photography.
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It is also important to point out that despite the decadal gap between Chambi’s career and public recognition, it was still possible to collect, print, exhibit and digitize Chambi’s works due to the efforts of his children and grandchildren, who had archived and stored his films to protect his legacy.
Chambi became a key player in the indigenismo movement, a pan-Latin American movement to reclaim Indian culture and history and incorporate as a crucial part of American identity. Chambi had relationships with key indigenita intellectual figures such as Luis Valcárel and José Uriel García, who appear in his photographs. 2 Another important contemporary to Chambi in terms of indigenista photographer is Figueroa Aznar, though Aznar had married into a landowning family, allowing him the leisure to focus on the more intellectual works, while Chambi as a son of a peasant family needed to maintain his commercial practice to remain a part of the Cusco society.
In Cusco society during Chambi’s time, there was some tension between the working class and the indigenistas which focused on the written word and more academic discourses. 4I think Chambi, as someone who needed to maintain his commercial work of portrait photography for the upper and middle class for financial support, and as someone who captured Andean life in a visceral, visual way, stands on an interesting balance between the two divides, and may have contributed to why he became such a prolific figure in Peru.
Chambi was working with photography in its early stages of proliferation, during a time when photography was considered more commercial and less of a “high art.” Documentation photographs of the daily Andean life like Fiesta de la Cruz, which were a major part of Chambi’s contribution to the indigenismo movement in Cusco, were treated separately by Chambi from his commercial studio work, as unlike his studio work Chambi did not retouch or retone his documentary photographs, as he wanted to keep them as true to life as possible. While Chambi’s studio photographs reveal his mastery of composition and form in a controlled setting, works like Fiesta de la Cruz also reveal Chambi’s comfort in capturing images with elements beyond his control. 1I think that this balance between control and freedom, commercial and authenticity, allowed for the dynamic power embedded in this image, which gives us the illusion that the scenery is unfolding before our very eyes.
How does this work relate to resistance?
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Wifredo Lam, a Cuban artist of “mixed Chinese, African, and Spanish parentage,” was heavily influenced by Picasso and the European surrealist movement (Britton, 177). Picasso’s fondness for Lam’s work originates from their shared tendency to incorporate “the aesthetics of traditional African sculpture in his [their] work” (Britton, 177). While Lam’s paintings were called “unmediated expression[s] of primitive sensibilities,” he instead represented personal reflections on cultural and civilizational differences (Britton, 177). During the time Lam spent with Picasso, his rediscovery of l’art negre represented a “cultural homecoming that enabled him to become conscious of his own authentic creativity” (Britton, 178). In his 1943 painting The Jungle Lam honors his mixed descent and interest in afro-Cuban culture by depicting a hybridization of humans and plants. By doing so, Lam embraces and reinvents Cuban identity.
Lam however, challenges the non-Cuban perception of the tropics and its association with the untamed or wild. The sugarcane, which intertwines with the four bodies depicted, is alien to the jungle and rather cultivated in fields. He therefore indicates that the exploitation of sugar and tobacco often overshadow the labor of natives required to cultivate such crops (Bravo). Furthermore, the work’s title mocks foreign understanding of the tropical as there are no jungles in Cuba (Cohen-Aponte).
The Jungle
Wifredo Lam
gouache on paper mounted on canvas
1943
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“Afro-Cubanismo became a vehicle by which Cuban national identity was defined in Cuban intellectual circles starting in the 1920’s” (Sims, 35).
Cubanidad implied a sense of unification through shared national identity and culture.
In 1927, Exposición de Arte Nuevo aimed to “preserve the ‘essential Cubanness’ of artistic production while keeping up with the avant-garde movements in Europe” (Sims, 37).
La Jungla often paralleled to Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles D’Avignon.
Picasso depicts the capitalization of prostitutes in “flat, angular, and strident characterizations” (Sims, 40).
Picasso’s and Lam’s aesthetics coincide in that they both incorporate African sculpture within works (Britton, 177).
Lam depicts a hybridization of four human figures with sugarcane and tobacco leaves.
The sugarcane is alien to the jungle and instead is cultivated in fields. This contrasts with the fanciful and oftentimes external perception of the tropics which dismisses the labor of Cubans (Bravo).
“Breasts mimic the rotund forms of the butocks, which in turn mimic tropical fruits such as mangos and papayas” (Sims, 42).
Figure’s metamorphosis alludes to Lam’s mixed parentage and interest in Afro-Cuban culture (Bravo; Britton 177).
La Jungla lacks single and centralized focus and instead opts for an “all over” painting in which the visual weight is uniformly distributed throughout the composition (Sims, 42).
During the 1940’s Lam’s work often featured women in a Caribbean landscape. Trope which extends to La Jungla.
In discussing Picasso’s and Lam’s sensibilities, Celia Britton claims: “Picasso moved away from his own culture to l’art negre whereas for Lam its discovery was kind of cultural homecoming that enabled him to become conscious of his own authentic creativity” (Britton, 178).
Lam reinvented the Cuban imagination through surrealist influences. He sought to “spew forth hallucinating figures with the power to surprise, to disturb the dreams of the exploiters” (Bravo).
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cissors found at the top right corner represent a rupture of modernity - questions as to how to reconcile the old with the new (Cohen-Aponte).
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How does this work relate to resistance?
Seen within the context of Basquiat’s work as a whole, this piece functions as a means of resistance against the erasure of African history and identity. His oeuvre pierces through an area of art which at the time was largely dominated and mediated by the white establishment. His artwork contends that blackness is an integral part of this movement and its influence will not go unrecognized like it so often has throughout history.
Black King Scorpio Catch
Jean-Michel Basquiat
1981
The artist of this painting, Jean-Michel Basquiat, was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1960. He was of mixed heritage; his mother, born in Brooklyn, was Puerto Rican and his father was born in Haiti. From a young age, Basquiat showed an affinity for drawing that his mother encouraged through trips to New York’s many art museums. Early in his career, Basquiat made a name for himself as a graffiti artist, coming up with the SAMO (“Same old shit”) graffiti tag which became ubiquitous in the Manhattan subway in the early 1980s. Basquiat later turned his focus to collage and painting, producing distinctive mixed-media works that addressed subjects such as racism, slavery, and the street culture of New York in the 1980s. Soon he became a celebrity and went from unknown and homeless, to selling paintings for over $25,000 in just a few years. Basquiat was involved with other famous neo-expressionist artists such as Andy Warhol, Edie Baskin, Keith Haring, and Robert Mapplethorpe.
Basquiat’s art holds an important place not only in Abstract Expressionism, but also in the art of the African diaspora. His images frequently reference aspects of black heritage; they often depict black figures, reference historical events, and feature famous black Americans, such as Sugar Ray Robinson, and Miles Davis. His artwork serves as social commentary on issues of race in American, with pieces like “Irony of the Negro Policeman” and “Slave Auction” calling attention to the history of slavery and of black identity in America. According to art critic Jerry Saltz, Basquiat “engaged in a ritualistic act of historical restitution, he crossed the black diaspora with pop culture, religion and drugs.” Basquiat’s art, while reclaiming past history, also captured the street culture of New York in the 80s, of which he was a central figure.
The image shown here, Black King Scorpio Catch, painted in 1981, shows a fisherman proudly holding up his catch. The fisherman, a black king with a crown of thorns, is a reference to Basquiat’s Haitian heritage. The crown is a common motif seen in much of Basquiat’s work and symbolized what he saw as the “spiritual superiority of African American men in modern society.” The thorns protruding from the figure and on his crown symbolize the obstacles black men encounter in everyday life in the United States. Even a simple act, as passive as fishing, is wrought with barriers that black men must navigate. The painting is filled with vibrant color, painted randomly around the background. Some writing is seen obscured through the painting, another technique that is characteristic of Basquiat.
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Tablas de Sarhua
Peru
1990-1992
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In the Quechua-speaking district of Sarhua in Western Peru, cultural identity and history has been preserved across generations through the art of tablas paintings. Dated to the 1600s, tablas are deeply rooted in the history of the Sarhua region in Peru. Tablas are painted boards which are traditionally long planks of wood divided into rectangular sections. They depict scenes of the family members and friends engaged in activities unique to themselves, with each family member given their own section of the board.
Originally, tablas were not meant to be self-contained art pieces. These long planks were designed to fit under the main roof beam of the family house and were given to newly weds by friends and family involved in the construction of their home. Designated artists worked in secret on the tablas and then gifted them to the newly weds following an elaborate parade, after which those depicted in the tablas expressed either approval or disapproval of their portraits. In this way, tablas functioned as a sort of house-warming gift in Sarhuan culture. When Sarhuans migrated to cities in the mid 1900s the content of the tablas shifted in response to consumer desires for depictions of the rustic, rural lifestyle of the Andes. As a result, the boards changed from “a kind of colonial primitive type of imagery to a more standardized, simplified, cartoon-type, folk style.”
How does this work relate to resistance?
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Tablas are connected to a long history of indigenous painting of religious and social imagery inside homes. Sarhuans trace the practice of painting on wood to the Incas, claiming that the interior roofs of family homes were painted in a similar fashion. More than just home decor, tablas give insight into the culture of the Sarhuan people. They all follow a traditional format which showcase traditional practices, such as the consumption of chi-cha, and are painted with patterns such as flowers and llama track, imagery which draws from the surrounding natural environment. Common motifs in tablas are the Virgin of the Assumption, patroness of Sarhua, the sun (inti), the moon (killa), and the local apu (god or spirit). Through the tradition of tabla painting, Andeans are able to resist the influence of globalization which threatens to wash away indigenous culture. Tablas have also been used to resist the oppressive regimes that ravaged Peru in the 1980s.
A series of 24 tablas, Piraq Causa (Who Is Still to Blame?) painted from 1990-1992 is a denouncement of the political violence that arose in Peru in the 1980s when Maoist Peruvian Communist Party terrorized the country. The tablas capture the terror and genocide that occured in Quechua communities during communist insurgency. One tabla, Descuartizamiento, “recounts the rape and torture of two young peasant women, one from Huamanquiquia and the other from Uchu.” Another tabla, entitled Sinchis, depicts the violence and destruction of a community carried out by 13 sinchis (paratrooper units of the Peruvian police). The communist party, known as the Shining Path, is referred to as onqoy—the Quechua word for sickness—which highlights how the party was viewed as a plague spreading around the country. The tablas themselves have a complex history: the collection was brought to Peru in 2017 and placed under investigation by the government’s Counter-Terrorism Directorate for alleged dense of terrorism. This action by the government reinforces the message of the tablas: that the history and livelihood of indigenous peoples is threatened and violence against these communities continues into the present day.
Lapiztola
Rosario Martinez and Roberto Vega
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This 50-meter mural is located on the wall of the Okupa Visual workshop in Oaxaca, Mexico and was painted by the art collective Lapiztola and street artist Said Dokins on September 26, 2015. The collective takes their name from the Spanish words lapiz (pencil) and pistola (pistol), which is a metaphor for how this group uses their art as a creative weapon.
This mural was painted in response to the 43 student teachers of the Rural Normal School Raul Isidro Burogs of Ayotzinapa, who disappeared and are believed to have been massacred by local police and gang members. A forensic team recovered the burned remains of over 28 individuals from shallow graves on the outskirts of the city of Iguala following the disappearance. The title of the piece, the absent hug, is a reference to those who disappeared and to the mothers who offer their hug to a child they hope to one day see again. The mural also makes an historical link to the Mexican Dirty War of the 1960s and 1970s, during which many young men left their homes and often never came back.
How does this work relate to resistance?
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The mural serves to bring to light the injustices that have plagued Iguala and Oaxaca. It’s an image that resists the corrupt government which is complacent with the murders. The placement of the image on a wall in a public space strengthens its impact, as Rosario Martinez, one of Lapitztola’s artists describes: “painting a wall red says more than a little poster can – it’s like people said at the time, ‘It’s a shout painted on a wall.” The collective has used murals to address other issues too, “from the cult of the drug lords and the use of genetically modified corn to the plight of Central American migrants.”
My Playground
Perla de León
The Bronx
1970s
As white residents increasingly departed cities for suburban life from the 1960s to the 1980s, the term “urban crisis” developed to describe the resultant decline in city economies. This decline manifested in the collapse of property markets, especially in neighborhoods inhabited by people of color, to which the government did not proffer the funding for urban renewal programs (Seligman). Over time, politicians from across the political spectrum began to explain the “urban crisis” as a phenomenon afflicting people of color as a result of their inherent “culture of poverty,” which rendered them unable to improve their circumstances (Weaver).
“Down These Mean Streets: Community and Place in Urban Photography” resisted the narrative presented by white politicians, writers, and photographers of the neighborhoods of New Yorkers of color as destitute and gloomy in this era of economic decline. The exhibit, shown at the Smithsonian Art Museum from May 11, 2017 through August 5, 2017, depicted images taken by ten photographers working in these neighborhoods during the time referred to as the “urban crisis” (Goldberg). With “Down These Mean Streets, the Smithsonian Latino Center wanted to use “insider” perspectives to evoke the resilience of these communities despite the economic difficulties they faced. The photographs chosen include a series by Camilo José Vergara which tracks the different business which tried to operate out of a storefront of 65 East 125th Street in East Harlem, and another by Anthony Hernandez which evokes the challenges faced by Latinos reliant on Los Angeles buses as a means of transportation (Jacobson).
With “The Playground”, taken in 1977, we turn our attention to the work of Perla de Leon, the only female artist featured in the exhibit (Goldberg). It is important to note that even amongst artists of color women often receive less recognition, and thus de Leon’s work proves emblematic of resistance to the patriarchal art world as well as to white depictions of the lives of people of color. When de Leon, whose parents are Puerto Rican but raised her in Manhattan, moved to the South Bronx to teach, she found much of it demolished and burned (“Meet The Artist”). This was a result of the practice by property owners of setting fire to their buildings as their value deteriorated in order to collect insurance money (Seligman). De Leon became interested in showing the vibrant community that persisted in this desolate neighborhood, resisting the assumption that a bereft urban landscape must be inhabited by a downtrodden people. In particular, she focused on children. “I feel that me photographs capture the spirit of the kids,” she said in an interview published online to accompany the “Down These Mean Streets”. “For me, [the spirit of the kids is] just resilience,” she added (“Meet the Artist”). As a result, we get this photograph of a little girl amongst the rubble, confronting the viewer with a defiant glare. Her one eye is closed as if she is winking, assuring all those who look at her that the poverty of her neighborhood, and the racism that undergirds it, will not stop her from playing.
How does this work relate to resistance?
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Invoking the agency of people of color:
This work, and the exhibit it was part of, gave the power to tell the story of the “urban crisis” back to the people of color who experienced it most deeply. In addition, this piece emphasizes on how people of color actively dealt with this period with optimism and resilience instead of giving in to the challenges they faced.
Resistance to gender oppression:
This work is by a female artist and of a young female subject, resisting the domination men have often exerted over how history is told and how female bodies are displayed and interpreted.
Resistance to class oppression:
One of the reasons people of color continued to live in these deteriorating urban neighborhoods was that they did not have the wealth and social mobility to leave. White photographers depicted them as powerless and defeated, when they chose to feature them at all. On the contrary, “Down These City Streets” focuses on depicting people of color, and in a way which ascribes them full humanity.
Resistance to institutionalized oppression:
Government policies such as redlining ensured that the burden of the “urban crisis” fell on people of color. This reality is something many people do not learn in a conventional academic setting, and one a work like “My Playground” demands that we recognized.
Mar Caribe
Tony Capellán, Dominican Republic
Barbed wire and flip flops
1996
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Americans tend to distance themselves from the realities of the Latin American neighbors despite their intertwined histories. When the Pérez Art Museum Miami chose to include Tony Capellán’s Mar Caribe in their “Poetics of Relation” exhibit, which ran from May 29 to October 18, 2015, Capellán hoped to confront Miamians with their relationship to the Caribbean as a result of Spanish colonization and modern globalization. First created in 1996, Mar Caribe features 500 flip flops painted in various shades of blue and green to evoke the Caribbean Ocean. In each subsequent installation, Capellán moved the shoes around to change the dimensions of the work, thereby embodying “the physical change of the Caribbean Sea and the social displacement of the marginal people who traverse it”. He replaced the rubber straps for the toes with barbed wire like that which surrounds the impoverished neighborhoods of Santo Domingo. When one imagines the pain of wearing barbed wire, one understands Capellán’s use of the wire to communicate the sufferings of those who live in these neighborhoods.
Capellán gathered the sandals along the banks of the Ozama River, which runs through the center of Santo Domingo. The riverbanks are primarily inhabited by families displaced from their farmland and forced to move to the city. When it rains, the river floods and carries away their possessions. Capellán began incorporating found objects into his work in the 1980s, and in this piece, “the individuality of these discarded, worn shoes, each of which bears the indexical trace of its former owner, is a harsh criticism of the half-island nation’s disavowal of the poor”. The plethora of sandals on display suggests “the endless supply of poverty” which exists in the Dominican Republic, but Capellán wanted his work to engage with this problem in a way that made viewers see the trash as beautiful. He strove for this with the pleasing colors and orderliness of the sandals’ arrangement.
With its multiple installations, Mar Caribe has become the embodiment of many themes of resistance. In 2005, The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA incorporated the piece into Island Thresholds, an exhibit on maritime art. Island Thresholds sought to present new histories of the Caribbean centered around the role of the Caribbean Ocean as a facilitator of colonialism, imperialism, and the interisland movement that have generated the islands’ cultural complexity. The International Triennial of Caribbean Art in Santo Domingo subsequently included the piece in its inaugural exhibit in the fall of 2010. Focused on the environment, the Triennial used Mar Caribe as a critique of the ecological devastation wrought by human trash. It also used the piece to rebuke the sociopolitics that place the poor in “an existence that is always on the edge, always in danger”. When he agreed to contribute Mar Caribe to the Pérez’s exhibit in 2015, Capellán hoped to reveal to Miamians and visiting tourists their experience of pristine beaches is not shared by the Dominicans with whom they share the Caribbean. Dominicans, especially those who attempt dangerous ocean migrations to the United States (a theme dealt with in many of Capellán’s other works) do not have the privilege of equating beaches with leisure. Mar Caribe resists conventional American understandings of the Dominican by drawing attention to its inextricable geographic and historical relationship to the United States. It calls on Dominicans and Americans alike to address the strife of the island’s poor.
How does this work relate to resistance?
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Resistance to institutionalized poverty:
Mar Caribe calls attention to the marginalization of the Dominican Republic’s poor which places them in constant danger of losing their possessions through flooding or their lives through migration. It offers the lives of these marginalized people visibility.
Resistance to US-centered historical narratives:
The work implicates the United States in the history of the Dominican Republic and the sociopolitical problems the island nation continues to experience. This is a relationship that Americans often wish to ignore.
Resistance to historical narratives which ignore the role of the environment:
By showing the result of flooding, Mar Caribe acknowledges the role bodies of water play, as throughways for commerce, colonization, imperialism, migration, and as destructive forces, in shaping human lives. The destructive nature of water could prove even more important to emphasize in the coming years, as rising sea levels increasingly impact many of the world’s most impoverished communities.
Resistance to traditional aesthetic preferences:
With Mar Caribe, Capellán has created something pleasing and engaging out of what most would consider to be trash. In doing so, he calls into question American values and, by paralleling this trash with Dominican lives also disregarded by Americans, American morals.
How does this work relate to resistance?
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Frida Kahlo wore traditional Tehuana costume native to Zapotec women from Tehuantepec. She “styled herself as a personification of the new nation… she and the new Mexico were one and the same” (Otto, 63). Frida’s deep rooted sense of nationalism extended to her claiming that her year of birth was 1910 (start of the Mexican Revolution) as opposed to 1907. Kahlo contradictingly embraces the status of women as “symbolic of the mother country,” a role that is endorsed by Self Portrait on the Borderline through the hyperfeminine nature of her clothing (Otto, 64). Unlike in her natural state, Frida depicts herself wearing a pink dress which “suggest[s] a rather delicate form of femininity” commonly idolized by the Mexicanidad movement (Otto, 63). By succumbing to established notions of feminine dress, Kahlo ciritizes the submission of women in society and the rigid standards of behavior to which they are to abide by. Hence Kahlo’s decision to engrave the pedestal she stands on with “Carmen Rivera,” symbolic of her marital status (Hoover Giese, 69).
However, Kahlo complicates her stance by having herself hold a cigarette within the painting. As established by Lucretia Hoover Giese in her article “A Rare Crossing: Frida Kahlo and Luther Brubank,” the cigarette becomes an inherently masculine symbol corresponding to the phallic buildings of the Detroit skyline (Hoover Giese, 69). Kahlo therefore establishes a dichotomous and gendered relationship between Mexico and the United States in which the former is engulfed by “feminine idols” and the latter by industrialization (Otto, 63). Considering that this Self Portrait on the Borderline is often interpreted as representing Kahlo’s ambivalence towards the United States she is, by extension, favoring that which is female. Her depiction of Mexico, which is reminiscent of Mexico’s pre-columbian past, emphasizes the “natural vitality and… [cultural] rootedness” of the country (Otto, 63). The lowered flag Kahlo holds on her right hand alludes to her repressed national identity and desire to go home. Clearly, Kahlo is working against a patriarchy in its multiplicity (Diego Rivera, the United States, social norms).
Self-portrait on the Borderline Between Mexico and the United States
Frida Kahlo
Oil on metal
1932
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Self Portrait on the Borderline is an oil painting on tin (11 3/4" X 13 1/2") belonging to Mr. and Mrs. Manuel Reyero in New York
During the Mexican Revolution many sought an equal distribution of wealth.
Ordeal was imbued with deep anti-American sentiments due to Porfirio Diaz’s reliance on the United States.
Mexicanidad movement established country’s identity as it lacked colonial and American influences. Instead, it propelled Mexico’s folk art and pre-columbian past.
Frida Kahlo wore traditional Tehuana costume native to Zapotec women from Tehuantepec. She “styled herself as a personification of the new nation… she and the new Mexico were one and the same” (Otto, 63).
In Self Portrait on the Borderline Kahlo expressess ambivalence towards “Gringolandia” (the United States) where she and her husband Diego Rivera resided at the time of the painting’s completion (Otto, 63).
In 1931 Kahlo “wrote of tensions between the two countries” in which she establishes the United States as an entity of greater political and economic power (Hoover Giese, 69).
Kahlo’s work presents dichotomous relationship between the bordering nations
Reminiscent of Mexico’s pre-columbian past (Aztec deities and pyramid). Kahlo depicts vegetation in the foreground to emphasize Mexico’s “natural vitality and above all [cultural] rootedness” (Otto, 63).
Kahlo’s Mexico is in stark contrast to her depiction of the United States as a heavily industrialized state. Urban buildings seem daunting and in opposition to the “female idols to the left of the picture” (Otto, 63).
Kahlo’s pink lace dress “suggest[s] a rather delicate form of femininity” which was idolized by Mexicanidad (Otto, 63). Idolization is literally represented by having Kahlo stand on a pedestal.
Pedestal inscribed with “Carmen Rivera” name that refers to her marriage to Diego Rivera. Frida Kahlo’s full name was Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderon de Rivera (Hoover Giese, 69).
Kahlo critiques this idealized femininity by depicting herself with a cigarette which is inherently masculine.
Self Portrait on the Borderline critiques the role of women “as symbolic of the mother country” (Otto, 64). However Kahlo subtly happens to endorse said status by wearing hyperfeminine clothing and by falsely claiming that her birth year was 1910 (start of the Mexican Revolution).
Self Portrait on the Borderline is often interpreted as representing Kahlo’s homesickness and longing to reside in Mexico. However, it happens to portray the cultural and political context she found herself in at the time the work was conceived.
Soweto Uprising: South Africa, June 16, 1976
The attempt to introduce Africkan as a language of instruction in ‘Bantu Education’ schools, supplanting English in some subjects, was the spark which ignited the Soweto uprising. Afrikaans was viewed as the language of the oppressor.
Indigenous languages would only be used for religious instruction, music, and physical culture. Afrikaa forced the students to focus on understanding the language instead of the subject material and discouraged critical thinking.
Resentment grew until April 30, 1976, when children at Orlando West Junior School in Soweto went on strike, refusing to go to the school demanding to be treated and taught equally to whites.
The students formed an Action committee which organized and on the morning of June 16, 1976, a series of demonstrations and protests led by 20,000 black students took part in numerous Sowetan schools in South Africa. Teachers supported them as well.
The students began the march only to find out that police had barricaded the road along their intended route. The leader of the action committee asked the crowd not to provoke the police and the march continued on another route, eventually ending up near Orlando High School
They were met with fierce police brutality - police set their dogs on the protesters, who responded by killing it. The police then began to shoot directly at children.
The number of protesters murdered by police is usually given as 176, but estimates of up to 700 have been reported.
The police requested that the hospital provide a list of all victims with bullet wounds to prosecute them for rioting. But the doctors refused to create the list.
The 1,500 police officers were heavily armed with automatic rifles, stun guns, and carbines and drove in armored vehicles with helicopters monitoring the area. The Army was on standby as a tactical measure to show military force.
At no point was the state able to restore the relative peace and social stability of the early 1970s as black resistance grew.
A few whites were outraged at the government’s actions in Soweto, and about 300 white students from the University of the Witwatersrand marched through Johannesburg’s city center in protest of the killing of children. Black workers went on strike as well. Riots also broke out in the black townships of other cities in South Africa.
This event marked the most fundamental challenge to the state of apartheid in South Africa and the South African government was pressured to transform apartheid into a more “benign” form. South Africa tried to proclaim Transkei as independent but that backfired when it was recognized as a puppet state.
It would take 14 years before Nelson Mandela was released but the government faced this hurdle early on.
Tiananmen Square Protests: Beijing, China, 1989
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Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution had caused severe damage to the country’s economic and social fabric. The country was very poor and then Deng Xiaoping emerged as a leader and launched a program to reform the economy.
While the reforms were generally well received by the public, concerns grew over a series of social problems that the changes brought about, including corruption and nepotism by elite party bureaucrats.
Students wanted democracy, greater accountability, freedom of the press, and freedom of speech and led demonstrations in Beijing, the capital of China.
At the height of the protests, more than 1 million people assembled in the square.
By May, a student-led hunger strike galvanized support for the demonstrators around the country and the protests spread to some 400 cities. Ultimately, China’s paramount leader Deng Xiaoping and other Communist Party elders believed the protests to be a political threat and resolved to use force.
The protests were forcibly suppressed after the government declared martial law. In what became known in the West as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, troops with automatic rifles and tanks killed at least several hundred demonstrators trying to block the military’s advance towards Tiananmen Square.
The Chinese government was condemned for the use of force against the protestors. Western countries imposed economic sanctions and arms embargoes.
China made widespread arrests of protesters and their supporters, suppressed other protests around China, expelled foreign journalists, strictly controlled coverage of the events in the domestic press, strengthened the police and internal security forces, and demoted or purged officials it deemed sympathetic to the protests.
This event is a tarnish on Chinese history and is a heavily censored political topic in China.
FMLN: El Salvador, 1980-1992
The FMLN (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front) formed as an umbrella group from 5 leftist guerrilla organizations.
There was huge socioeconomic inequality between a small but powerful landowning elite (2% of the population).
After the inauguration of President Romero (due to election fraud) his new government declared a state of siege and suspended civil liberties.
In the countryside the agrarian elite organized and funded paramilitary death squads. These squads were taken over by El Salvador’s military intelligence service which murdered thousands of union leaders, activists, students and teachers suspected of sympathizing with the left.
Tensions had been building between farmers and the elite class leading up to the Salvadoran war and farmers struck for higher wages and better working conditions on a farm in Tierra Blanca.
National Guard troops responded with military force. Violence spread and the campesinos began to join the FMLN and other left wing guerrilla groups.
Insurgents ranged from children to the elderly, both male and female, and most were trained in FMLN camps in the mountains and jungles of El Salvador to learn military techniques
In November 1989, MLN caught Salvadoran government and military off guard by taking control of large sections of the country and entering the capital, San Salvador, which was a turning point in the war.
Soon after the U.S. government started to support negotiations to end the civil war, whereas up to that point they had pursued a policy of military defeat of the FMLN. Since the U.S. government was the major funder of the Salvadoran government and military, it exercised considerable influence over the course of events.
A large number of people were disappeared during the conflict. After peace accords were signed in 1992, all armed FMLN units were demobilized and their organization became a legal left-wing political party in El Salvador.