21st Century
Art Gallery
Politcal Resistance throughout history
How does this work relate to resistance ?
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Resistance through materials and connection to the natural world
Rodriguez’s use of the same pigments and amate paper of the Florentine Codex links her work with it’s legacy of resistance.
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Resistance through maps
Maps are a way through which those in power define a place and therefore the people who inhabit it. By creating a map, Rodriguez redefines California through the eyes of a Chicana.
​Resistance to gender oppression
Rodriguez is a female artist who replaces the male figures of the Florentine Codex with women to place women at the center of history.
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Resistance to oppression based on sexuality.
The scene with Julio Salgado testifies to the presence of queer people within the undocumented community.
Resistance to violence.
Rodriguez draws attention to the location of I.C.E. detention centers and the violent nature of the arrests they make against people like Perla Morales Luna which the government wishes to hide or normalize.
Part of the Codex Rodriguez Mondragon
Sandy Rodriguez
Collection of works on amate paper
Exhibited at the Riverside Art Museum from November 4th, 2018 -January 27th, 2019
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After returning home from a 2014 trip to Oaxaca with a jar of cochineal, artist Sandy Rodriguez was at first unsure of what to do with the pre-Columbian red pigment. The arrest by Mexican government of 43 student protestors later that year inspired Rodriguez to use the cochineal to depict fires of protest. Diana Magaloni Kerpel’s Colors of the New World: Artists, Materials, and the Creation of the Florentine Codex, which analyzed the additional significance indigenous artists layered into the Florentine Codex through the use of different pigments, furthered Rodriguez’s realization that the pigment “could be this specifically loaded material that could reference a history, a culture… it could stand in for mexicanidad.” Inspired to create a Chicano codex which dealt with contemporary political issues regarding the border between the US and Mexico, Rodriguez spent two years studying how to source and formulate the pigments as the artists of the Florentine Codex did (Miranda).
Rodriguez produced this 9’ by 4.5’ map, titled, “De las Señales Pronósticos y I.C.E. Raids en el Sanctuary State de Califas,” the second work of her Codex Rodriguez-Mondragón, in early 2018. She paid careful attention to the pigments, sourcing mushrooms from Northern California so she could give the Golden State its proper hue (“Artist’s Talk”). Moreover, Rodriguez chose to create her codex on the amate paper like that which the creators of the Florentine Codex used. The Spanish government made using the paper illegal after conquest due to the paper’s role in spiritual practices which defied Catholicism and Spanish rule, and Rodriguez uses it in her work to inhabit the legacy of resistance to Western political power and historical narratives established by the creators of the Florentine Codex (Miranda)
In creating this map, Rodriguez turned to the Book Twelve of the Florentine Codex, which depicts the pronósticos, or omens, the Aztecs received prior to the Spanish invasion and conquest of Mexico. Seven scenes surround Rodriguez’s map of California. In one of these, Rodriguez shows the llama de fuego, a giant column of fire, which the Aztecs say appeared suddenly to burn each night leading up to the invasion. In this depiction, Rodriguez has replaced the Florentine Codex’s male figures with Ella Diaz, Diana Margoloni, herself, her mother, and her sister in a rejection of the focus on men as historical actors by the earlier codex. Two of the other small scenes prove similarly notable. One depicts the arrest of Perla Morales Luna by Border Patrol agents in early 2018. Rodriguez painted the scene from screenshots she took of a video of the arrest taken by one of Luna’s daughters, which showed the 36-year-old woman visibly distraught as agents shoved her into an SUV (“Artist’s Talk, “Woman Arrested”). Another of the scenes shows Julio Salgado, an artist who self-identifies as undocu-queer and whose work bridges the issue of gay rights with that of deportation, being arrested by I.C.E. officials (“Artist’s Talk”). Salgado was released and continues to create art which celebrates the LGBTQ+ illegal immigrants often rendered powerless by the American legal system and invisible by Latino culture (Compton).
The map portion of “De las Señales Pronósticos y I.C.E. Raids en el Sanctuary State de Califas” also thinks critically about the intersections between Spanish conquest and I.C.E. detention. Rodriguez replaces the Spanish vessels depicted in the Florentine Codex with every kind of vehicle used by the I.C.E. according to the organization’s website. She invokes the sea creatures as embodiments of a Mexican-American identity tied to the natural world, and depicts them consuming many of the vehicles so as to show that even I.C.E. will ultimately fail to suppress mexicanidad. She also notes where wildfires occurred in California, which she suggests to have resonances with the llama de fuego as omens of the increasingly oppressive power of the United States government. Most notably, the map shows the locations of I.C.E. detention centers across the state from a GoogleMaps views. Beside each one lies a sore, the I.C.E. representing a rash on the state (“Artist’s Talk”). The Codex Rodriguez-Modragón calls attention to the abuses that the government wishes to hide in a manner which honors traditional Mexican forms of expression and resistance established by the Florentine Codex. Rodriguez furthers these themes of resistance by placing women and queer people at the center of what is often a male-dominated and heteronormative narrative of resistance.
How does this work relate to resistance ?
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This piece relates to resistance because Guadalupe- an immigrant- is taking his healing into his own hands and reestablishing himself as a modern descendent of the indigenous American peoples. History and historical documents can often be seen as disconnected from the present, yet when Maravilla physically draws himself into the storyline of these historical figures, he reminds us that the Indigenous Americans are very much alive and present today, through him.
Additionally, healing from trauma caused by an oppressor is a form of resistance. The Civil War in El Salvador was one bloody catastrophe after another, yet the United States only aided the corrupt government in suppressing the guerrilla groups. Maravilla, through these pieces, is reconnecting with his father and other undocumented immigrants to heal themselves from this traumatic experience which all of them endured together. Because the United States did not help the civilians during the war and instead exacerbated their problems, Maravilla does not rely on outside forces to heal him. Just as he fled his country by his own accord, without the help of the United States or any larger power, so does he now heal himself without needing any sort of “savior”. He is his own, and he does not need someone in a position of power to save him.
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Requiem for My Border Crossing and My Undocumented Father’s #6
Guadalupe Maravilla
Inkjet print with graphite pencil and ink
Exhibited in the Whitney Museum of American Art from 2016-2018
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Guadalupe Maravilla is a Salvadoran artist who fled El Salvador in 1984 to escape the Salvadoran civil war at the time. When seeking refuge, he was “passed along” by various coyotes through Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, and more.
During the Salvadoran Civil War, the United States played a “‘dirty war’...which pitted a right-wing government against Marxist guerrillas. The United States sent military advisers to help the Salvadoran military fight its dirty war,” during which “more than 75,000 lost their lives,” (Bonner).
This is the 6th piece in a series titled “Requiem for My Border Crossing”.
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These maps are works of collaboration with undocumented immigrants, and these collaborators “draw onto his digital manipulations of the Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca (ca. 1550), a colonial Mexican manuscript that combines Nahua pictorial writing with European conventions of the historical annal”.
In doing this, he is “mapping the [modern] immigrant experience” to the trials which 16th century Americans underwent, as well.
A goal of these maps includes “[creating] new narratives of migration”. By combining a Salvadoran game called “tripa chuca” with these maps, “bold contour drawings” are created which “exhibit a surprising visual harmony with the nahua pictorial elements”. This connects to what we have seen in pieces such as the “Map of Cempoala” and the “Map of Culhuacan”, which show place glyphs and movement of these people. Maravilla’s work tells the story of immigrants who must undergo trials and tribulations to reach their goals, similarly to how these ancient maps show the stories of their people.
Tripa Chuca is a children’s game which Maravilla recalls that he played frequently during his border crossing. It requires two players, and the only rules state that the players must connect matching pairs of points using lines which cannot cross each other. Maravilla states that this process of drawing lines in the tripa chuca style creates a “bond between two people” because the “lines create a form of mapping...the lines become a border, like this endless maze.” For him, and many other immigrants who have bravely crossed the border, “sharing experiences… is a form of healing.”
In summary, these pieces are “recollaging” previously existing 16th century maps and narrating the modern immigrant experience. The lines drawn are created by other undocumented immigrants so that it becomes a collaborative process, therefore ushering in healing.
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Madame Beauvoir’s Painting, Rewriting History Series
Fabiola Jean-Louis, Haitian-born, raised in New York
Archival pigment print photography, unframed
2017
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Fabiola Jean-Louis is an Afro-Cuban-Haitian artist, born in Haiti by parents with Cuban families and raised in New York, and currently based in Brooklyn. She is a relatively new face in the art world, only leaving her training in medicine to pursue a career in art four and a half years ago, but her work has been gaining attention and popularity
This piece, Madame Beauvoir’s Painting, is a part of Jean-Louis’s ongoing series titled the “Rewriting History Series,” where Jean-Louis reconstructs life-sized dresses of female European aristocrats from the 15th to the 19th centuries by meticulously hand painting and sculpting paper, then puts on the dress on a black female model and takes a photograph. The photographs are then processed and retouched and printed on a large scale, giving the photograph an appearance of a photorealistic painting.
In her artist’s statement on the series, Jean-Louis writes: “the series speaks to the shocking treatment of Blacks throughout history and the trauma inflicted on their bodies juxtaposed with the abstract idea of black freedom.”6 This theme of trauma inflicted on Black bodies is apparent in Madame Beauvoir’s Painting, where the female subject of the photograph, dressed in a paper gown, is facing her back to the viewer and is instead looking at a painted recreation of the famous photograph The Scourged Back, which depicts the gruesome whipping marks of a runaway slave and Union army soldier private Gordon, and became the pictorial symbol for the abolitionist movement and was widely circulated.3 The back scars on the figure of the painting is reflected on the back design of the dress, though the female subject is poised, collected, and regal.
Jean-Louis’s decision to recreate the dresses out of paper, rather than fabric, at first came from practicality, that expensive fabrics such as silk used in these dresses were too expensive. “As a black woman, I learned to do without,” states Jean-Louis in an interview.4However, as Jean-Louis continues to perfect her recreation of luxurious fabrics and decorations by hand painting paper in an extremely laborious process, the decision to put so much effort in creating something so fragile, only to be captured in a specific moment in time through photography becomes a thought-provoking process. In one interview, Jean-Louis related this process to her journey in Buddhism, of creating something beautiful then letting it go, walking in between the state of life and death.5
The name Beauvoir in “Madame Beauvoir” comes from the name of the artist’s aunt on her mother’s side.When the subject of her photographs are “named” in the title of her works, Jean-Louis always uses the name of her family. In an interview with Brooklyn Reader, Jean-Louis stated that her process of making her works always “starts with an idea, ends with not knowing what happened, and that entire journey is a conversation with my ancestors.”2The Afro-Cuban-Haitian experience of Jean-Louis and her family is that of forced displacement through enslavement, the suppressing of religious and cultural practices (such as the practice of Voodoo by the women of Haiti, which influences Jean-Louis’s artworks), and the re-writing of indigenous culture to fit Western and Christian ideologies. In this way, Jean-Louis’s attempt to continue to cultivate a deep connection with her family and her home through painting, sculpting, and photography is a part of a long lineage of resistance on the part of Afro-Carribbean women which allowed their culture to survive against European aggression. This aristocratic, French name of “Madame Beauvoir,” which automatically conjures up an image of a white female aristocrat, which nevertheless is not only the title of an image of a black woman but is actually a name of a black woman also challenges the Western dominated world of portraiture, and preconceptions about what a name or title suggests about someone’s identity.
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How does this work relate to resistance ?
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The first and main thing to note about Fabiola Jean-Louis’s photograph, Madame Beauvoir’s Painting is the gaze, or the lack thereof. The female subject of the photograph, adorned in one of many hand-painted and sculpted dresses constructed by Jean-Louis for her ongoing series “Rewriting History,” is looking away from the viewer and focusing intently on a painting (the significance which will be discussed later) inside the world of the photograph. Her posture is straight, and her mouth and her eyelashes peeking out ever so slightly from her profile reveals a deep, intense focus and deep contemplation on her own accord, which does not prompt her to feel obligated to be gazed at, or even gaze back at the viewer. Jean-Louis states in many interviews and writings that her main purpose of this series is to not portray black women as victims, as the image of overt violence and victimization of the black body has proliferated so much through the Black Lives Matter movement, that unfortunately we have grown desensitized to it. Jean-Louis’s goal as an artist is, then, to recontextualize the portrayal of blackness to bring a more elevated awareness, even if the content is still about issues of violence and systemic racism. In Jean-Louis’s words- “I chose to let beauty be the vehicle that I would carry those ugly truths in.”7In this powerful image, through a confident posture, facing her back towards us, dressed in elegant, aristocratic clothing, the black woman resists against what the Western art world has always portrayed women of color as something to be erased or ignored, if not sexualized, exoticized, and objectified.
Jean-Louis’s “Rewriting History” project, of which Madame Beauvoir’s Painting is a part of, contains a series of photographs with black women posing in aristocratic dresses worn by female European nobility during the 15th to 19th centuries in portraiture paintings, which Jean-Louis has reconstructed to life size using paper. All the women photographed in this series have a solemn, dignified expression which evokes resilience and strength. Jean-Louis states that her project came from “the need for Black women to claim space.”7The series places black women in a European context– the fashion, the pose, the backdrop, and the painterly style which is accomplished by Jean-Louis re-touching the digital photography in a software, all evokes the aesthetic language of oil portraits of European nobility from the 15th to 19th century. Jean-Louis reconstructs the dresses from paper by looking back at the paintings from these time periods, sifting through museum catalogues for paintings and fashion in order to get as many angles of the dress as possible. When asked in an interview whether she would consider working with African textiles, Jean-Louis answered no, stating that she “prefers to seize what is deemed precious, luxurious, and conspicuous to European material culture and present a pastiche that disturbs the subject of early fashion portraiture and its relation to power and leisure.”1In another interview, Jean-Louis also stated that it was important for her to create photographs that she could print out on a large scale, “that could be hung in museums… A contemporary spin on what a painting is, to insert us into a space where we haven’t seen black women.”2In other words, through her aesthetic language and medium, Jean-Louis is working purposefully within the framework of European art to insert black women and reclaim the presence of blackness in a world which has purposefully sought out to make them invisible or not human. In this way, Madame Beauvoir is an act or resistance against the erasure of black women in the European art world.
Another part of the conversation that Jean-Louise is inserting into the aesthetics of European portraiture is violence and violation on the black body. The “painting” part of Madame Beauvoir’s Painting, which the model is studying intently, is a reconstructed oil painting image of The Scourged Back, a famous photograph of the violent, raw scars left on the runaway slave/ Union army soldier private Gordon, which was widely distributed to become a symbol for the brutality of slavery in the abolitionist campaign. A more subtle detail is that the scarring pattern on the photograph is repeated on the back of the dress. Jean-Louise stated that she had some difficulty with this image specifically, since her goal for the series was never to victimize black bodies, particularly black women. “But,” she states in an interview, “it had to be done...she is not a victim in this story, she’s a survivor, she’s a reminder that it’s happened.”7Through taking the time to reconstruct the historic dresses, embroidering on the pattern of the scars, re-painting the image of the racialized violence on the black body, and finally framing it all within a single image through the eyes of a black woman artist, Madame Beauvoir’s Painting is an act of resistance against the whitewashing erasure of black bodies and the act of violence acted upon black bodies throughout history, and beyond that an act of reclaiming the space which was taken away from them, demanding to be seen, standing strongly as not as victims but as survivors. In the artist’s words– “blackness is omnipresent, and [blacks] should not have to fight for our existence. I hope that Black women and little girls feel celebrated, honored, and loved. I want them to know that I cherish them.”7
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Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons
Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons was born in 1959 in the province of Matanzas, in the town of La Vega, Cuba. She grew up on a sugar plantation in a family with Nigerian, Hispanic and Chinese roots. Her Nigerian ancestors were brought to Cuba as slaves in the 19th century and passed on traditions, rituals, and beliefs. Her heritage influences her artistic practice which combines diverse media including photography, performance, painting, sculpture, film, and video. Her work is autobiographical, investigating themes of history, memory, gender, and religion and how they form identity. Through deeply poetic and haunting imagery, she evokes stories of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, indigo, and sugar plantations, Catholic and Santeria religious practice, and revolutionary uprisings. She is currently a professor in fine arts at Vanderbilt University and she is currently working in over 30 museum collections including the Smithsonian Institution, The Whitney, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Canada, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Perez Art Museum, Miami and the Fogg Art Museum.
How does this work relate to resistance?
Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons artworks and influence shows resistance to given away her culture and identity in order to be part of a new society. As Stavans and Gracia quoted, “she is considered neither an American nor a Cuban. She is that rare animal, a Cuban American, something that is still evolving and lacks any permanent essence. There is no natural place for her...She is a foreigner. A stranger. An anomaly. And then she is black, but not an American black. American blacks and Cuban blacks share their race and some phenotypes, but they do not have the same culture. Again, she is an out-sider, and as a woman, with her struggle in a still male-dominated world, she has another strike against her. Her game, both in life and in her art, has to be survival” (Stavans and Gracia). She cannot give away her cuban, Nigerian, Chinese identities that she shaped in Cuba to become part of “America” because Maria Magdalena is a foreigner or an other in our society, like chicanos, she would not be accepted as an American, cuban, African American, or Afro-Cuban. She is not completely part of of one group, but she contains small characteristics of each one of these groups together. As a result, she decided to embrace her foreignly and portray it in art.
Moreover, Maria Magdalena’s influence shows resistance to injustices, prejudices, and discrimination of immigrants in the United States especially of women immigrants. As Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons quoted in an interview, “women look at your roots. Be proud of who you are. Be certain of where you are coming from. Wherever you come from Latin America, you have a deep, profound things that could be inspirational, examples to look to and from. Stay with that. Learn English. Get educated. Work hard in those things that are practical, that will allow you to step forward in your aspirations. Stay with your dreams. Rely on your community. Rely on other women that have been successful, and that is the path of success” (Luis). She wants immigrant women to become independent from men and rely on each other for success. Moreover, she wants immigrant women to learn english because that way they could have a voice to defend themselves from others and raise awareness on the issues our society is having because that way immigrant women would have a weapon to fight against the discrimination, injustice, and prejudices that many immigrants are having at the hands of those who were born in this country. Therefore, she portrays the power of immigrant womanhood in our society. She wants to show the immigrant women are determined and strong enough to become successful in this country no matter where they are coming from. That's why she often depicts herself in her artworks as an evidence that an immigrant black woman was able to create a movement in the art world that is full of men and white individuals.
How does this work relate to resistance?
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Tales from This Side of the Atlantic: Manhattan is a very complicated piece of work. The painting shows a woman and a baby boy, this is similar to the paintings of the Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus during the Colonial Period of Latin America. However, both individuals are dressed in clothes that only the elite of the colonial period would dress. The skin color and dresses are depicted by dark colors such as black and brown, while the background and the tea pot are painted with vivid colors such as light blue, pink, etc. Moreover, the painting can depict influences from the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and their Diasporas (García | Tales from this Side of the Atlantic). It shows the difficulties many Africans had to endure in the Atlantic to reach the New World. This can be depicted in the “bubbles” surrounding the two individuals of boats and vessels floating at sea. Due to the fact that many Africans were forced to come to the New World and the blend of races with the Tainos, Africans, and Spaniards, the cultures of Dominican Republic and the rest of the Caribbean surfaced.
Her artwork shows resistance to discrimination and prejudice that many Caribbean immigrants endured in the United States. As she quoted, “my fascination with the social human experience since the “discovery” of America and its multifarious results is an endless source of inspiration and an essential part of my discourse. This fascination has led me to such themes as the causes and consequences of migration, the mestizo and barroquism as consequences of colonization, the inversion of traditional beliefs of salvation, and the questioning of religious and social uses of the notion of paradise. I create my allegorical narratives by appropriating and transforming symbols and objects that have included life jackets, inner tubes, suitcases, mattresses, tents, umbrellas, religious icons, and newspapers clippings” (Garcia). Her work primarily focuses on what many Caribbean immigrants had to endure on their trip to the United States and become part of such a society just like their ancestors from Africa. With this painting, she wants to show that her people are resilient to any diccidualties that life throws at them. They are capable of tolerate discrimination and abuses because the trip was harder than their life in the USA. They are capable of becoming part of the society and successful just like their ancestors. However, this artwork also shows resistance to give away part of your identity by spelling Manhattan as “Manhattana.” The spelling of “Manhattana” is the title of the artwork shows that although an immigrant becomes an American citizen, his identity did not change. This identity can be shown in the accent that many people from other parts of the world have. The accent connects an individual to its origin because it reminds them where they came from.
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Tales from this side of the Atlantic: Mannahatta
Scherezade Garcia
Acrylic and Charcoal, Collage on Canvas
72x 48 inches
2015
“Scherezade Garcia is an interdisciplinary visual artist born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and based in New York. In her work she addresses contemporary allegories of history and processes of colonization and politics, which frequently evoke memories of faraway home and the hopes and dreams that accompany planting roots in a new land. By engaging collective and ancestral memory in her public intervention and studio-based practice, she examines quasi-mythical portraits of migration and cultural colonization. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, El Museo del Barrio, The Housatonic Museum, Museo de Arte Moderno de Santo Domingo and private collections. Her personal papers are in the collection of the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution” (García)
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The Two Fridas—Lifelines (Las Dos Fridas—Línea de Vida)
Giuseppe Campuzano
Color photographs and performance
2003
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Campuzano is the founder of the Trans Museum in Peru: a portable project that consists of performance art, photographs, and multimedia exhibitions. His work explores the various treatments of trans people and the overall attitude to the queer community, highlighting the inequalities and restrictions which expressing a trans sexual identity.The museum provides an emphasis on the trans body and its objectification and a criticism of such an outlook. There is religious imagery and commentary among many of the photographs in the museum where Campuzano draws similarities between the Virgin Mary and Transvestites.He provides commentary on gender inequality within the trans community showing how drag queens can be invited to host in the clubs that ban them from attending.The museum itself is meant to serve as a conversation starter rather than a static exhibition.
Within his performance art pieces, Cumpazano makes connections to colonial art as well as the Inca Empire, ritualistic dances, and sacrificial practices from a queer perspective. He shows the androgynous rituals of the Moche and Inca people in order to trace the trans practices to their roots in ancient Latin America. This allows Campuzano to write the trans community into mainstream history and showing them as integral members of history.
The Linea de Vida exhibit shows the history of Peru from a trans perspective, integrating a fictional trans character into various points in time
The exhibit dramatizes history, showing it in a new light and breaking down the traditional heterosexual view.While the individuals depicted in the museum are largely fictional and the exhibits are mostly historically inaccurate, Campuzano shines a light on the Trans community allowing for future histories to incorporate transgender individuals.
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How does this work relate to resistance?
Through his work, Guiseppe moves Peruvian transvestites into the mainstream, rejecting and resisting traditional ignorance of the community and the intolerance that rises as a result
He resists the heterosexual gaze by providing a trans outlook on life and history
Campuzano seeks empowerment through history, either finding trans ancestors or writing them into history, resisting the mostly heterosexual structure of the past
The museum exhibits critique feteshisation of the trans people and address/counter traditional misconseptions and prejudices concerning the LGBT and Transgender communities.
The exhibit serves as a rebuttal of underrepresentation of transgender people in history, media, and art.
Campuzano’s work is a rare representation of Latino Trans Gender art which fights stigma associated with freedom of sexuality, mocks traditional (skewed) visions of beauty and inserts transvestites into history.
How does this work relate to resistance?
When some lowriders reacted to the mural with hostility, Galería de la Raza refused to halt exhibition of the work. Vandals defaced the mural four times in the two weeks after it was installed, three times with spray paint and then by burning it. Each time, community members held candlelit vigils as the curators unveiled the repaired mural. Viviana Paredes, founder of the Gay Latino Alliance and a resident of the Mission, stated after the mural was burned that, “People are always doing something to try to scare us, intimdate us, harm us. Look what it does to our community. It only brings us back stronger”. “Por Vida” and the gallery, artist, and community behind it exhibited dogged resistance to a culture which refuses to acknowledge queer people. More broadly, Galería de la Raza resists the exclusionary nature of the art world by supporting Chicano artists and creating exhibits for public display to engage the Latino community of the Mission.
Por Vida
Manuel Paul
2015
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In the later decades of the twentieth century, a social and cultural movement known as “lowriding” emerged amongst the Mexican American communities of California and the American Southwest. As lowriders cruised down city streets, they shaped urban spaces and served to police the gender and sexual identities of their neighborhood through imposing a machismo ideal of social power. Artist Manuel Paul created this mural, titled “Por Vida,” as a means of challenging “long-held assumptions regarding the traditional exclusivity of heterosexuality in lowrider culture”. The Galeria de la Raza installed a digitized version of the work in the Mission district of San Francisco on June 15, 2015 in honor of Pride Month in the city. It depicts three portraits, one of a gay couple on the left, another of a transgender man in the middle, and a third of a lesbian couple in a style used by lowriders to depict themselves. As a mural displayed on the street, this work visibly interjected the presence of queer people into the lowrider car culture whose leaders in San Francisco claimed to have solely heterosexual members.
Galería de la Raza, founded in 1970 as part of the Chicano movement, sought out Paul as part of their ReGeneration Project. One of the newest components of their multidecadal efforts to celebrate Latino history, culture, and activism, the ReGeneration Project offers young Latino artists help exhibiting their work and also supports their further study. These exhibits, such as the Digital Mural of which “Por Raza” comprised part, bring art to residents of the Mission to whom gallery spaces are often not accessible. Paul, a queer man himself, is the co-founder of the Maricon Collective. The collective seeks to establish a physical place, as well as a place in historical memory, for queer Latinos through hosting events and conducting oral histories.
How does this work relate to resistance?
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The Great Wall works to contribute to SPARC’s goals of educating the public about the valuable additions of Chicanos to the Californian present culture and society. In highlighting the struggles of this commonly marginalized community, The Great Wall helps prevent the hushing of Latin American history, resisting the domination of the usual European cultures. The Great Wall additionally supports the resistance of most discriminated groups, including women and those of the LGBTQ+ community.
The Great Wall of Los Angeles (The history of California)
Judith F. Baca and the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC)
1974 - present
In 1971 Judith F. Baca helped to cofound the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) to create public works of art focused on collaboration between artists and the community. SPARC’s projects emphasize current and past social issues while providing empowerment to the public to face these problems. (“About SPARC” and KCET)
Proposed by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1974, The Great Wall of Los Angeles was SPARC’s first major project. Drawing influence from the initial wave of Mexican Muralism in the 1920s, The Great Wall is a 2,754 foot long mural — one of the largest in the world. It is painted on the Tujunga Flood Control Channel in Los Angeles, which had been built by the Army Corps of Engineers. (KCET and NPS)
The Great Wall chronicles the history of California, and while it focuses on the stories of Latin Americans in California, it also tells the influence of other marginalized communities in creating the present California. The mural is divided into 6 sections with 86 segments, typically divided based on decade. Although Section 1 was conceptualized by various artists, Baca was the primary artist involved with the creation of the other five sections. Together, all the sections highlight the challenges overcome and contributions made by Chicanos and other ethnic groups. (NPS and “The Great Wall of Los Angeles”)
Over the years, over 400 youths have helped in the creation of The Great Wall, many referred to SPARC by the government criminal justice department, the Summer Youth Employment Program, and the Army Corps of Engineers. (“The Great Wall of Los Angeles”)
While some sources state that The Great Wall was completed in 1984 with the creation of Section 6 (NPS), SPARC claims that this project remains a work in progress, and will be added onto in order to keep the mural updated to the present day — ideally reaching a mile long — although it currently chronicles only up to 1984.
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Standing Rock: North Dakota, 2016-17
The Grassroots movement that began in early 2016 in reaction to the approved construction of Energy Transfer Partners’ Dakota Access Pipeline.
Many in the Standing Rock tribe considered the pipeline and its intended crossing of the Missouri River to constitute a threat to the region’s clean water and to ancient burial grounds that would be in violation of their treaty.
Routing the pipeline across the Missouri River near Bismarck was rejected because of the route’s proximity to municipal water sources; residential areas; and road, wetland, and waterway crossings.
The alternative selected by the Corps of Engineers crossed underneath the Missouri River half a mile (800m) from the Standing Rock Native Reservation. A spill could have major adverse effects on the waters that the Tribe and individuals in the area rely upon.
Using a permit process that treated the pipeline as a series of small construction sites, the pipeline was granted an exemption from the environmental review required by the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.
However, citing potential effects on the Native tribes, most notably the Standing Rock Sioux, in March and April 2016 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Interior (DOI), and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a formal Environmental Impact Assessment.
In April 2016, Standing Rock Sioux elder LaDonna Brave Bull Allard established a camp as a center for cultural preservation and spiritual resistance to the pipeline, over the summer the camp grew to thousands of people. Sacred Stone Camp.
In the spring and early summer of 2016, Allard and other indigenous leaders focused on media outreach, resulting in tribal delegations and individuals coming to stand with them from all over the country and, eventually, the world. Several camps were established, some of which were directly in the way of construction.
As the protest went on, they were met with attack dogs and water cannons. The use of water cannons in freezing weather drew significant media attention.
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe filed suit against the Corps of Engineers in July, but the motion was denied.
In December, under President Barack Obama’s administration the Corps of Engineers denied an easement for construction of the pipeline under the Missouri River.
On January 24, 2017, newly elected U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order that reversed the Obama legislation.
On February 7, 2017,Trump authorized the Army Corps of Engineers to proceed, ending the environmental impact assessment and the associated public comment period. The pipeline was completed by April.
Remaining protesters were evicted. While the pipeline was ultimately completed, its construction was delayed for some time and the issue of land rights and environmental rights were brought to light.
There have already been oil leaks.
Arab Spring: North Africa & the Middle East, 2010-2012
A wave of protest and insurrection occurred in several Middle Eastern countries from the period 2010-2012 against authoritarian regimes, neocolonialism, and global capitalism. U.S. intervention in particular had caused the wide spread destabilization of the region.
After the events of the Tunisiam Revolution of December 17, 2010 which led to the ousting of president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and establishment of an electoral government, the revolt spread to Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain where major regime change and insurrection occurred.
In the streets many thousands of people agitated for the end of authoritarian regimes with some mixed success. Protesters used social media activism, protest camps, riots, demonstrations, civil resistance and disobedience.
A major slogan of the demonstrators in the Arab world is “Ash-shab yurid isqat an-nizam (the people want to bring down the regime)”.
The wave of initial revolutions and protests faded by mid-2012, as many Arab Spring demonstrations were met with violent responses from authorities, as well as from pro-government militias and counter-demonstrators.
President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia was ousted, charged, exiled, and the government overthrown. Considered to be the most successful outcome as it is the only country to have transitioned into a constitutional democratic government.
President Mubarak of Egypt was ousted, arrested, charged, and government overthrown.
The leader Muammar Gaaddafi of Libya was killed following a civil war. Government overthrown.
President Saleh of Yemen was ousted and power handed to a national unity government.
President Bashar al-assad of Syria faced civil uprising that deteriorated into armed rebellion and eventual full scale civil war (still ongoing).
Civil uprising was crushed by authorities and foreign intervention in Bahrain.
Government changes and reforms were implemented in response to the protests in Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Morocco, and Jordan.
Oaxaca Commune: Mexico, 2006
A popular mass movement formed in the streets of Oaxaca City, Mexico in 2006 to protest the corruption of the Mexican government and its violent repression of a teachers strike organized by the revolutionary teachers union Section 22.
For almost six months, an unstructured coalition of workers, students, peasants, women, youth, indigenous peoples, and urban poor brought the government of the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca to a virtual standstill.
Thousands of Oaxaca protests overtook the city, expelled the Meican police and established an autonomous free zone for six months.
At least 3000 barricades were erected in the city with many people also occupying buildings and other structures.
Campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience was sparked by outrage at the June 14th police offensive against an encampment that teachers on strike had set up in the central square.
In the streets, the people of Oaxaca organized horizontal self-governance and established people’s power in the form of the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO) which demanded the ousting of governor Ulises Ruiz.
Ruiz’s policies, which ranged from the self-serving to the ridiculous, broke the patience of a society whose tolerance for the PRI’s “traditional” strong-arm tactics of rule had already been tested by the extreme impunity and corruption that characterized the tenure of his predecessor, José Murat. Almost immediately after taking office in January 2005, Ruiz moved to preempt popular unrest with a decree banning political demonstrations in the city’s center.
Ruiz’s first year in office was marked by an aggressive campaign of political containment in which at least 36 opposition, community, indigenous, and grassroots leaders and activists were assassinated.
The commune was successful in warding off the police force until November 25, 2006, when the Mexican military forcefully evicted the protestors.